Williams adamant it will regain frontrunning form before 2012 ends

The Grove-based outfit started the season strongly, and helped Pastor Maldonado deliver his maiden pole position and victory at the Spanish Grand Prix in May.

Since then, however, Williams has struggled to maintain that kind of performance, and its drivers have delivered just 15 points extra in the 11 races since Barcelona.

It endured a particularly tough time in Korea last weekend too, with neither Maldonado nor team-mate Bruno Senna making it in to Q3 or scoring any points.

Although aware of the difficulties it faces, Williams's chief operations engineer Mark Gillan is confident that the team's car has good potential - and he even foresees a strong finish to the campaign.

"I really do hope that, at the end of the season, we are back at the sharp end of the grid and I can see no reason why we cannot be," explained Gillan, who arrived at Williams amid a technical staffing restructure at the end of last year.

"Within Williams there is a great desire, once we have any issues, to sort them out. As you saw at the end of last season, we had a lot of problems and we got on top of them.

"It takes time and, with back-to-backs it is difficult to react, especially flyaway back-to-backs, but now we have a bit of a break I am confident within the team that we can come back fighting."

Williams' form in Korea was hampered by balance consistency problems, but Gillan is confident that the matter was a one-off, and that the team's form should improve at the next few races.

"The challenge now is to be more competitive and get into Q3, at whichever track we are at," he said.

"Over the season we have found the car to be competitive at most tracks; so it is something that was specific to Korea.

"At the last couple of races, Red Bull, McLaren and Ferrari have been doing very well, but I am still pretty hopeful that, at the end of the season, from our perspective, we can get back into the mix."

Williams is currently eighth in the constructors' championship, 31 points behind Force India.