Williams can challenge F1’s reigning world champions Renault in 2007.
That is the belief of the Grove based team’s co-owner and engineering director Patrick Head, who said Williams’ focus for the upcoming Sepang test is to improve the FW29’s qualifying pace.
“We qualified poorly at twelfth and fifteenth (in Australia) and it is very difficult to do anything but pick up the crumbs from those grid positions so we have to work out how to be much further up the grid,” Head said.
Nico Rosberg finished seventh at the season opener last Sunday but, significantly, the German set the fifth fastest lap of the race.
Head suggested that Rosberg, 22, had been caught behind slower cars for much of the 58 laps.
“But that’s our problem in that we didn’t qualify well.
“I think we are able to race at the same sort of level as the Renault but we need to be closer at the start of the race,” the Briton added.
