After a series of difficult seasons since 2018, Williams’ strong 2021 seems to be continuing this year, with Alex Albon already scoring a point for the team on third race of the 2022 season.

But aside from a bold and successful strategy, another important factor might well have helped Albon’s journey to his first point for the Grove squad.

Dave Robson, the team’s Head of Vehicle Performance, explained that the team is putting some weight saving measures in place, beginning with a slightly revised livery that strips back some of the blue on the sidepods – this could already be seen in Melbourne.

Aston Martin is another team that removed some paint from its original livery to save some weight – approximately 350g – and that could lead to a minor but significant gain of more than 0.01s/lap.

“You'd always like the car to be lighter and I don't know how obvious it is, but the paint scheme is different,” said Robson.

“That is in part about lowering the weight of the paint on the car.

"I don't know where we fit in the overweight category up and down pitlane, it's very hard to know, but it is absolutely a challenge on these cars to get them below the weight. It's something else we can continue to work on.”

Williams' stripped back paint job could be seen in Melbourne - Image by Hasan Bratic - MotorLAT

Speaking about the limitations of their 2022 car, Robson admitted the main problem the team faces is regarding the balance of the car, with both drivers complaining about it early in the season. But he is confident future upgrades will solve this problem:

“There are a couple of limitations.

“There has been one consistent theme with the balance, that the drivers have been vocal about and we've been chipping away at that since we arrived in Bahrain for the test.

“We've definitely made some progress, and there's a few new components in the pipeline that should help that. So there's a little bit of that to sort out.”

Regarding the porpoising or the bouncing issue, the team is “getting pretty close” to running its car in the ideal setup window, without ride height compromises. Robson also said the car needs some more raw downforce, which is a common theme between teams in the lower midfield.

“In terms of the ride height and the set-up and the porpoising, I think we're getting pretty close to be able to operate it in the right kind of window now.

"If we get it a little bit wrong, we risk damaging the floor, so that's probably our limit. But we are pretty close to where we want to run it.

“And I think the rest of it, apart from that one little balance issue we're trying to sort out, we just need a little bit more load, really, to help get the tyres in the window and make us quicker everywhere,” he concluded.