Lowe: Williams is "very disappointed" with first half of 2017

Williams Racing is "very disappointed" with its performances in the first half of the 2017 season. These are the word's of the team's technical chief Paddy Lowe, who joined the team for the 2017 season after leaving the reigning champions, Mercedes. 

Heading into the 2017 season, Williams headed into the championship aiming to reclaim fourth place in the Constructors' Championship after losing the position to Force India in a closely contested fight in 2016. This season however, the story remains the same, and the Grove-based team lie in fifth place in the standings while Force India is once again ahead.

Force India has secured 101 points in the first half of 2017, while Williams has only picked up 41 points through a mixture of reliability issues and sheer inconsistency weekend to weekend. Toro Rosso follow closely behind, two points adrift in sixth. 

"Definitely at the half-term report stage we’re not looking as good as we’d like. We’re very disappointed, the car is quicker than that points table would reflect," said Lowe.

"I think one of our biggest problems has been that we haven’t been scoring the points we should have done at the track with our speed of car. That’s for a number of different reasons," he added. "On top of that, we’ve seen a lot of variation from circuit to circuit. There are places that we significantly underperform and we really need to have a car that will perform more equally at different destinations, so that’s a big focus for next year."

When the summer break is over, the F1 circus heads to the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa - a track that should benefit Williams due to the reliance on power that the circuit has. With a finely tuned Mercedes engine in the back of the FW40, Williams will be looking for a reset in the second half of 2017 and will be hoping to take the fight to Force India to improve what has been a disappointing season so far.

Chris Soulsby