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Williams technical chief Paddy Lowe is adamant his Formula 1 team has not given up on improving its 2018 car despite already commencing early work on the ’19 package.
The team’s terrible season continued with a difficult Canadian Grand Prix in which Williams was the slowest outfit.
Lance Stroll and Sergey Sirotkin qualified 17th and 18th before Stroll crashed out on the first lap, while Sirotkin finished 17th and last.
Lowe told Autosport that Williams is working hard on updates for the FW41, some of which have simply taken time to get through the system.
“We’re already working on next year in parallel, but we absolutely haven’t given up on this year,” he said.
“We are doing a lot of work back at base, some very significant work, it’s just not yet appeared on the car.
“The season is still early, and we’re absolutely not giving up on it.
“Some things we’ve been chipping away at and there are other things that are more major, that take a long time.
“We’re not naming dates, but we hope to make some good progress before the [summer] shutdown.”
Lowe insisted that Williams is not suffering from the recent departures of chief designer Ed Wood and aero head Dirk de Beer, despite the lead times involved in hiring new people.
The team has reshuffled responsibilities among the existing staff.
“We’re really in good shape, we’ve got a good team together at the moment,” said Lowe.
“We’ve got the main ingredients that we need to work on this year’s car, and design next year’s car.
“We will continue to build and reinforce, but we’re not lacking in the right effort in the right areas at the moment.”