Cutting ties with the past, starting from the livery. Williams’ latest car, the FW43, hit the track for the first time earlier today in Barcelona, showing off a striking all-new livery featuring red, white and blue.

The Grove-based team is in for a fresh start, following last year’s disappointing campaign. They managed to score a sole point throughout the season, having struggled since the very beginning to even get the car ready for pre-season testing.

A different story must be written in 2020, as deputy team principal Claire Williams assures that a massive team overhaul was what the team needed to plough forward.

“We have spent time addressing our areas of weakness and have ensured that we have the right people, structures, procedures and resource in place to deliver competitive race cars. We are all committed to re-building Williams and returning the team to competitiveness”.

However, Williams’ design director Doug McKiernan stressed that no fundamental changes have been operated on the FW43. The 2020 challenger is therefore based on the same concept as its predecessor.

“We have paid significant attention to understanding the problem areas of the FW42 and we have carefully chosen parts of the car to develop, those that would give us the most performance for the resources we have”.

“The main concept behind the FW43 is that it is a continuous development of the FW42, with no fundamental concept changes to the layout. The most important indicator that we are on the right path will be the level of correlation we have between the tool kit we use to design the car and what the track data is telling us”.

“There has been a healthy development rate in the wind tunnel, and we have found reasonable improvements in the cooling efficiency. The team has addressed the mechanical issues that affected it in 2019, these include the brakes and the overall weight of the car. We have made some good progress across these areas and will continue to focus on them during the season.”

The fact that the FW43 is up and running ahead of testing marks great progress compared to last year, but the track will determine where the British outfit really stands.