It was previously reported that the new FW27 was suffering from problems that came about as a result of problems with the teams new wind tunnel, which had produced figures regarding the new design but these figures had yet to be seen on the track. It is estimated that these problems was causing the new car to be around three quarters of a second that its rivals.

In the early design phase of the new car the team had use scale models in their new wind tunnel, but when they went to a full size car it did not produce the same figures.

As for when the situation can be rectified Williams management are confident that the problems with the car should be sorted out within a few weeks. This is going to make the opening rounds of the championship difficult for the team while they try to recover this lost ground.

The team is confident that the basic design of the car will allow for it to be competitive but that work had to be done on its aerodynamics. Management has every confidence that things will improve in time as they know what the problems are.

Head said: "We are not expecting to be the class of the field at the start of the season, but the car is good and has great potential to develop. This will happen early in the season, and we will get stronger over the early races.

"The new wind tunnel is a fantastic piece of kit, but we were probably a bit over-confident. Our first wind tunnel runs fifty percent models; the new one runs sixty percent models, and we've had trouble with the correlation between the two tunnels. With the benefit of hindsight we should have waited a year before running the different tunnels with different models."

In respect of his confidence in that things will improve Head said: "My ability to predict the future is no better than anyone else's, and maybe it is misplaced, but I am confident that we can make a lot of progress over the next month to six weeks by bringing additional performance to the car."

Frank Williams added: "It's deeply embarrassing. We've got to make a rapid recovery over the next few months. But we will be applying performance at a better rate than we have ever done before."