F1: Williams eyes Austria upgrade boost

Williams's 2015 Formula 1 season will take off from the Austrian Grand Prix when a major upgrade arrives, believes head of vehicle performance Rob Smedley.

The team had a nightmare weekend in Monaco, where Felipe Massa and Valtteri Bottas could only qualify 12th and 16th, respectively, while come the checkered flag they finished a lowly 15th and 14th on a track not suited to the FW37.

Smedley believes the faster circuits coming up in Montreal, the Red Bull Ring and Silverstone will bring Williams back into the mix at the front, with the race in Austria of particular significance. Addressing the updates to come, Smedley said: "We've some coming in Canada. They should be really healthy, from lots of different areas, really.

"Then we've quite a big package coming for Austria, and without going into details that's going to be a really healthy step. We're really looking forward to getting that on the car, and then it's going to be a series of constant developments.

"We showed in Spain we could keep pace with the top teams, but in Monaco, which was a bit of an anomaly, we couldn't get the car or the tires to work. We put ourselves way out of position and you couldn't really see where we were or how good we are.

"But, going into Canada we'll be back to our normal position, plus we've those updates coming for Austria, a circuit that suits our car as we saw last year. In Canada last year we were really quick and in Britain, that was the part of the season where we started to come into our own, getting podiums and scoring lots of points. So the next three races I'm really confident about."

Despite Smedley suggesting Monaco was a one-off, he insists everyone within the team has been searching for answers to ensure there is no repeat in similar circumstances.

"We'll go through the process and find out how to do it right in extreme conditions," added Smedley. "If we go through all the work to understand what went wrong and how to do it better in the future, then if we do come across these problems again this year it will only serve us well."

Originally on Autosport.com