Smedley: Williams must perform everywhere

Williams’ head of vehicle performance Rob Smedley says his team has to perform on every circuit if it wants to achieve its ultimate goal of winning F1 championships again.

After a dismal Monaco weekend, the Grove-based squad bounced back in Canada with Valtteri Bottas securing the outfit’s first podium in 2015 and team-mate Felipe Massa storming through the field from P15 to claim sixth.

“[Montreal] is a circuit that was always going to play to the strengths of our car and we got the points we deserved,” said Smedley.

“If you want to pretend to be a top team, then you cannot go into any event believing that you’ll be on the back foot in places. Or believing that other people have more of an advantage than you at certain circuits.

“If you want to win world championships, which is what this team wants to do eventually, then you have to master every single circuits. You can’t be scared of anywhere.

“Coming out of the back of the Monte Carlo weekend, which was incredibly difficult for us as a team – to be back there in a position that we don’t believe we should be in – we’ve come to Montreal with the firm self-belief that we’ve fixed issues and we’ve delivered. But the team has to keep doing that.”

Williams now heads to Austria where the team plans to introduce new developments on its Mercedes-powered FW37. While Smedley acknowledges the significance of the future evolutions, the Briton says the squad has already been steadily improving over the course of the current season.

“It's an healthy upgrade that we have coming in Austria but we've already had healthy upgrades at quite a few of the races this year. We just keep chipping away.

“We are getting upgrades all the time and we're moving closer to the front, and equally as important we're moving further away from the people behind. We've just got to keep going in that direction.”

Click here for the best quotes from last weekend's Canadian Grand Prix

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter