For Williams F1 driver Pastor Maldonado the 2013 Formula One season has not being an easy one with the Williams team struggling to get the best from the FW35. But for Pastor if the team can make a further step forward of "three or four tenths" they will be able to move ahead of various midfield teams.

After scoring their first point of the season in Hungary Pastor would see a reversal of fortunes in Belgium where he struggled all weekend, with his race seeing him involved in a collision with both Force India's. He would come away from the race admitting that his pace was poor. Despite this he still feels that the team should still aim for gains in terms of its place in the competitive order.

"[The pace] was really bad all weekend," Maldonado said. "I think we need to keep improving performance. We were not so competitive … during the race I have been doing very well in the last couple of races and recovering a lot. But sometimes you cannot expect that the driver can do everything. You just need to push very hard to have a quick car, a solid car that's consistent. At the moment we are struggling with the pace in qualifying and the race; we need to push harder than before to close the gap to the top ten.

"I think it's possible, we're not that far away. Now the gaps seem to be more close against the teams. We are quite close and if we improve by a couple of tenths - three or four tenths - that will put us in a good position to fight for the top ten. But at the moment it's not like that."

But Pastor still made it clear that making any progress would be difficult. As for the impact that new chief technical officer Pat Symonds would make he was unsure.

In respect of his impact Pastor added: "Who knows? The car is not competitive and he is not magic. He's a very experienced technician and is a good engineer, and for sure we are expecting him to restructure departments and some things in the car to push more in terms of engineering, but we never know if we can improve or not. For sure we will do 100% and even more to improve before the end of the season."