Williams technical director Sam Michael insists the best is yet to come from the new FW33 after a shaky start to the season in Australia.
The car appeared to be relatively quick in testing, but failed to deliver on its potential at the first race after lead driver Rubens Barrichello made a mistake in qualifying and both drivers retired with gearbox problems on Sunday. Nevertheless, Michael is confident the car is better than its performance suggested and that it will be in the hunt for points in Malaysia.
"The competitiveness of the FW33 was encouraging given the limited running and set-up time we had in Melbourne," he said. "There is more to come from the car and I hope in the next few races we can show what the FW33 is capable of.
"Heading to Sepang we will once again be hoping to get into the top ten in qualifying and end the weekend with some points for both cars."
A feature of the Williams is its tightly packaged rear end, which features an ultra slim-line gearbox casing. However, it was the gearbox that caused the team problems at the weekend.
"We had transmission failures on both the cars this weekend," confirmed Michael. "We had a failure on Pastor [Maldonado]'s car early on in the race with Rubens retiring on lap 48. We are still currently investigating both problems.
Barrichello also had a gearbox oil leak during final practice.
"It was unrelated," added Michael. "The issue we had on Saturday was with the rear gearbox oil seal that caused a leak."
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