Williams deputy team principal Claire Williams is in no doubt the marque’s stunning Austrian Grand Prix weekend was no one-hit wonder.
After the worst season in the team’s history last year, in which they collected a miserable five points, Williams would appear to be on the rise again.
Steady improvement throughout the course of this year has been laced with missed opportunities before they finally came good at the Red Bull Ring.
On Saturday Felipe Massa spearheaded Williams’ first front-row lock-out for 11 years as the Grovebased organisation ended Mercedes’ domination of qualifying.
In the race, Valtteri Bottas secured his maiden Formula One podium and the team’s first for over two years, with Massa fourth.
The 27 points collected was the team’s biggest haul since the introduction of the current scoring system at the start of 2010. Williams are currently placed fifth in the team standings with 85 points with Mercedes on top with 301 points.
On the face of it the finishing positions may appear a disappointment given the grid slots, but there was overwhelming delight as realistically Williams were always aware it would be difficult to beat Mercedes.
Now, though, the bar has been raised and the objective is to prove results such as those in Austria can be achieved consistently.
Claire Williams said: “We said before the start of the race the opportunity to win probably wasn’t there. So to come third and fourth behind a Mercedes team in a class of their own at the moment was the objective, we met it, and we’re really happy with that. And this is certainly not a flash in the pan, so the aim now is to maintain this level of consistency, this level of points scoring.
“The car has the pace, we’ve shown that consistently throughout the previous races, but we’ve had a bit of bad luck and sometimes we’ve not made the best calls.
“But now we’ve achieved this, the realistic aim is to keep making up positions in the constructors’ championship and I think we can do that – I hope we can do that.
“It’s about consistent points scoring, scoring big points as well, with more podium appearances. That has to be the goal for us.”
It could be argued the team missed a trick with their strategy for despite Massa and Bottas leading the way for the first 15 laps, they allowed Mercedes to get the jump on them in the pit stops.
But Williams added: “Even if we had made different calls, I don’t think they would have made a difference. We went into the race knowing we had to do our own thing and get the most points possible, and that’s what we did.” Pictures: Getty
