No Mercedes B-team plan for Williams says deputy team principal

Claire Williams has strongly denied reports that Williams could become a B-team for Mercedes, insisting the Grove-based outfit will remain a full-fledged constructor in F1.

Williams endured a difficult start to its 2018 campaign, performing no where near its expectations as its young driver line-up of Lance Stroll and Sergey Sirotkin struggled to extract speed from its new FW41.

Rumors from the paddock are contending that Stroll's father, billionaire Lawrence Stroll, has urged Williams to enter a technical partnership with engine supplier Mercedes and emulate what Haas has achieved with Ferrari.

• Williams won't recruit more engineering talent to fix problems

Stupefied by the reports, Claire Williams says such an arrangement with Mercedes, or anyone else will for that matter, isn't on the horizon.

"I don’t know where that story has come from," she told Autosport.

"We are a constructor. Frank [Williams] and Patrick [Head] fought for our independence for decades, and they did an incredibly good job.

"One of my responsibilities is to protect our independence. And that’s incredibly important to us."

Williams may however have some budget constraints to deal with in the mid-term. Main sponsor Martini will depart at the end of the year and the outfit's marketing department will likely be working overtime to find another commercial partner.

"We're always trying to, that's the fun of F1, you're always every year looking at your budget and making sure that you have a healthy racing budget to compete with the following year," he said.

"It's no different this year to the previous year, or 10 years ago or 30 years ago, it's exactly the same."

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