Claire Williams firmly stood up for the team in today’s press conference in Baku, clarifying that she has no intention of throwing it on the market. The speculation was triggered by the recent rumours picturing a very keen Dmitrij Mazepin close to becoming a shareholder of Williams Racing, but the deputy team principal set things straight in no time.

Although she admitted that a meeting between her and Mr Mazepin took place, no further developments have occurred over the matter.

"I saw those stories, I paid little attention to them. – she said- I haven't met Mr Mazepin to talk about that. We had a brief conversation in the mid part of last year but subsequent to that there have been no conversations.”

"I'd just like to be really categoric about it: Williams is not for sale, I have no intention of putting Williams up for sale. I don't see why we would."

Despite all the heat towards Williams’ poor performance and lack of updates, no one is backing down. "But you don't give up when times get tough. It's a test of your character to continue and prove to everybody that you can do it."

Claire Williams appears determined to make the team thrive as it did back in its glorious days, no matter how much time it is going to take.

“So it's not on the market -she stressed- I don't want to sell it to anybody, I want to go out and prove that we can do what we are in the sport to do, and that's to get back on the podium and win races again. That may take us a long time, but it took Frank more than 10 years to do it when he first started in this sport, and I'm sure that we'll have a lot more stuff thrown at us.”

Furthermore, she highlighted that Williams was able to find more performance in China compared to the previous two races, stating that progress is there, although it is difficult to perceive.

The damage on Russell's FW42 from today's crash stands for a huge blow for the Grove-based team in terms of work and money, even though it is too early to quantify, as Claire stated in the press conference. The FIA will now go over the incident along with the team in order to estimate the damage and look into the causes of the mishap.In the meantime, George Russell will revert to chassis 3 and will not get back on track until FP3 tomorrow.

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