Williams won't give up on fourth place - Lowe

ABOVE: Force India's Sergio Perez leads Williams' Felipe Massa at Baku. 

Williams chief technical officer Paddy Lowe insists his team will not change its targets and give up on fourth place in the constructors' championship this season.

Having finished third in both 2014 and 2015, Williams was relegated to fifth position last season as Force India got the better of a close battle with its Mercedes-powered rival. This year has seen Force India build on that performance and deliver an impressive first half to the season, scoring 101 points by the summer break while Williams is 60 points adrift.

Despite the big deficit and having Toro Rosso just two points behind in sixth place, when asked by RACER if the team would need to re-evaluate its targets over the summer as fourth is unrealistic, Lowe (pictured below) replied: "No, we won't give up on that.

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"I think we can be very strong at some other races this year – hopefully some of the ones coming up – and we'll aim to get better at exploiting the performance with points which we've also not been great at doing in the first half.

"First half term report is 'could do better', could do a lot better. We'll go back to the second half with that mentality of trying to do that."

While the gap between Williams and Force India stands at 60 points, the Grove-based team only enjoys a 30-point advantage over ninth-placed McLaren, with Haas and Renault also in contention for fifth position in the constructors' championship.

With Williams having failed to score a point with either car in Hungary following Felipe Massa's illness that saw him replaced by Paul di Resta, Lowe wants to use the disappointing performance to provoke a reaction over the summer break.

"I said to the guys, 'That's a good weekend to motivate us to make a quicker car.' I think that's the best way to sum it up, really. We've got a lot of work to do and we need to be better than that. And we can be better than that, so that's what we'll go away and do."

Lowe expects Massa to be fit for the Belgian Grand Prix at the end of August, with the Brazilian having returned home to rest after feeling unwell on Friday and Saturday in Hungary.