Williams expecting McLaren to join fight

Williams chief technical officer Pat Symonds says he expects McLaren to join the fight behind Mercedes this season.

While Mercedes is the heavy favourite going in to next weekend’s Australian Grand Prix, Rod Nelson says he expects Williams to be in a “scrap” with Ferrari for best of the rest, while Red Bull also displayed similar pace during testing. With McLaren hitting numerous reliability issues with Honda, Symonds says the signs are there that the MP4-30 will be a threat to the teams behind Mercedes once it runs reliably.

“At the moment behind us Ferrari look to be the ones who’ve had the most improvement but you can’t ever discount any good team,” Symonds said. “Red Bull will be there, McLaren once they get past there problems will be there. I try to carry on looking forward but you always have someone snapping behind you.”

While in agreement with the generally expected pecking order behind Mercedes, Symonds says he is wary of assuming who Williams’ rivals will be based solely on testing.

“I don’t think we’ll be sucked back but whether Ferrari, Red Bull will get sucked into our tail it is hard to say! Winter testing is a bit of a false dawn because every year we try to see what the pecking order is and often get it wrong.

“While one can’t quantify the gaps it looks like Mercedes are still a bit away from the rest of us and the gap is still there. But apart from that ourselves, Ferrari and Red Bull look pretty close.”