Williams is approaching its 2021 season determined to sustain last year's progress, but the British outfit is also cautious about how it will manage its resources ahead of F1's crucial regulation overhaul in 2022.
The sport will usher in a new era next year with a raft a changes aimed at leveling the playing field and improving the spectacle on the track.
Teams have already started work on their future designs, but for Williams, which aims to make another step forward this year, running this season's race program as well as possible while also making sure it will field the best possible car in 2022 will require a fine balancing act in terms of resource allocation.
"It's [the 2022 rules] a great opportunity for all the teams, but it's a great risk as well," explained Williams team boss Simon Roberts, quoted by Motorsport.com.
"But the thing we're focused on is that there's zero carry over from '21 to 22. So you can't be late with anything.
"The simplest part, which stops you racing, will stop you racing. So we're being more cautious than normal with our programme.
"We're working backwards from the first race in 2022, looking at what we need to have in place [then], what we need for the winter test, and then taking that all the way back through the development programme to figure out how much space and capacity we have across the whole organisation."
Roberts expects the crossover point at which Williams' engineers will devote the entirety of their focus to their 2022 contender to occur well before the mid-summer.
"We definitely have time, people, windtunnel and CFD availability in the early part of the year to develop the '21 car, and that's what we're going to do," he said.
"There will be a crossover point. If you said: 'When is the crossover point?' I don't know. But it's not going to be August - we'll be well into the 100 percent 2022 [car development] before August.
"But it's not the end of January either. Somewhere in that range, we'll cross over."
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