Both Nick Heidfeld and Antonio Pizzonia have spoken publicly about the performance of the new FW27 and both have indicated that the new car is still away from the pace needed to challenge at the front and that there was a lot of work to be done to get the car up to speed.

Both drivers were not optimistic about the teams chances in the early races of the 2005 season. Both drivers spoke to the British magazine Autosport regarding the FW27.

Pizzonia was quoted as saying: "I think there's a lot of work to be done on the car and on the engine. Some teams are looking quite strong at the moment, especially Renault, and we are a bit far from them."

Heidfeld added: "We are quite good in terms of reliability, we are not bad in terms of speed, but at the moment we are not the quickest ones. I hope that some new parts, which will come for Melbourne will bring positive results, but only when we'll get there we'll know exactly where we stand."

As for where the lack of speed was coming from Heidfeld said: "Of course if we're not the quickest it's because there's a lack of grip, but it's difficult to say where is it coming from. But at the moment we are concentrating on trying to get more downforce from the car."

Despite this Heidfeld felt that the teams reliability should help them in the early races as their competition has suffer from various issues with their cars during testing, in particular McLaren  and Renault.

Heidfeld added: "It's true that both teams look very quick, especially Renault, but I think they both have some problems with reliability, and that could work in our favour in the beginning of the season," he said.

"We also have some small reliability issues, but nothing we couldn't solve, so I think we have to make the best use of our reliability at the beginning of the season and work to find more speed in the meantime."

Pizzonia pointed the finger at issues at the teams factory in Grove. He said: "There were some problems at the factory, which I don't think I should mention in detail, but I'm sure if they fix those problems at the factory they'll be able to fix the problems with the car. It sis believed that he was making reference to the teams new wind tunnel.