Williams will miss the opening day of Formula 1 pre-season testing at the Circuit de Barcelona, with the new FW42 car not yet ready to run.
The news follows the team’s cancellation of a filming day scheduled for Saturday, in which it planned to give the new car a shakedown ahead of the start of testing on Monday.
Williams is now planning to have the car on track for Tuesday – the second of eight days of official pre-season testing.
“Unfortunately, we have had to delay the start of our pre-season Barcelona test to Tuesday morning,” deputy team principal Claire Williams said.
“We have had an incredibly busy winter at Grove getting the FW42 prepared for the season ahead and, despite everyone’s best efforts, we need some more time before it will be ready to run.”
Earlier in the week, Williams held a livery launch event in which it revealed a brand new title sponsor, telecommunications company RoKiT.
Rendered images of the FW42 were revealed later in the week with the conformation of the shakedown cancellation.
“Our absolute priority is to always ensure we bring a car to the track that is the best that it can be and sometimes that takes longer than you’d anticipate or like,” Williams added. “It’s clearly not ideal, but equally it’s not the end of the world.
“We will obviously have our work cut out to recover the time lost but we still have seven days of testing left and we will be maximising that time to prepare the car for the first race.”
Williams enters 2019 with its first all-new driver line-up since 2010. Formula 2 champion and Mercedes protege George Russell joins the team for his debut F1 campaign, while one-time grand prix winner Robert Kubica makes his much anticipated F1 return after injury ruled him out of the category ahead of the 2012 season.
With Racing Point-bound Lance Stroll and Sergey Sirotkin forming the driver line-up last season, Williams finished last in the constructors’ championship.
