With less than a week before Formula One takes to the track for the opening practice session for the 2020 Austrian Grand Prix Williams Racing have spoken of how they will be bringing upgrades for the FW43 to this first race of the restarted 2020 season. The team also spoke of how it is planned that they will bring further updates as the season progresses.

The last time the team was able to run their 2020 challenger was in pre-season testing and that was only for a period of six days. After this the Covid virus crisis would put a stop to any further running so the opening Friday practice in Austria will be the first time the Williams team will be able to assess the performance of the car.

But despite the difficulties imposed by the lengthy break since the team had been able to return to the factory to continue work Williams has been able to push ahead with upgrades based on what they learnt in winter testing. Such that in a recent interview for Racer.com Claire Williams was pleased to announce that the will be upgrades at this first race in Austria..

Claire said: “Our upgrade programme was clearly affected as everybody else’s was, but I have to say that the operations and planning departments have done a fantastic job to make sure that we get to the first rounds with some level of upgrades on the car.

“So, we will have upgrades. We haven’t had to push them out.

“But that’s only thanks to a lot of hard work that the manufacturing team has put in back in the factory out of the official lockdown periods.

“As soon as we were able to start producing the upgrades we did, but I think most importantly for us, it was making sure that we had the race quantities to manage the triple-header going into Austria.

“We’re in pretty good shape, we’re pleased with where we are.”