Williams claim suppliers and budget were not factors in car delay

Williams' deputy team principal Claire Williams has confirmed that the reason for the team's car delay in pre-season testing was not due to lateness by external suppliers, and nothing to do with a lack of budget.

The car arrived two-and-a-half days into testing in Barcelona to hand Williams their latest major setback.

With many believing it was to do with financial issues, the Williams deputy team principal has strongly put to bed that theory.

"I think there were many stories around what potentially could have been the cause of it," Williams said to Motorsport.com. "A couple that I read that were issues with external suppliers. That wasn't the case.

"Or that financially we were in a difficult position and that had an impact on car build. It didn't."

She didn't go into too much detail to why it took so long, but Williams did explain that the mass amount of effort going into building an F1 car from scratch, should never be underestimated.

"I think we take for granted sometimes that we're going to get one car to the test track and two cars on the race track," she continued. "But Williams still builds, or desgins and bulds its race-cars in-house, in their entirety.

"There are 22-odd-thousand parts to a car, which we have to design, which we have to manufacture, which we have to assemble, which we have to put through crash testing etc. - that's an enormous job. And we just didn't make it happen for a number of reasons."