Pastor Maldonado convinced Williams has fundamentally good car

After a promising winter, Williams tumbled to the back of the field in Melbourne and was uncompetitive all weekend.

Valtteri Bottas could only finish 14th, while Maldonado spun out, having labelled the car "undriveable".

How it all went wrong for Williams

Maldonado is certain that because Williams has gone for an evolution of the 2012 design that won last year's Spanish Grand Prix, the design itself is not flawed and the Melbourne issues are temporary.

"It will be short-term, I think and hope," he said. "It's nothing in the design of the car. I think we have great potential. The heart of the car is last year's car.

"We just need to work at it and see what we can do in time."

Williams removed some of its more recent upgrades during the Australian GP weekend and raced with the car closer to launch specification.

It is set to backtrack a step further with one car for a back-to-back test in Friday practice.

"Now we think we see where the problems are and we think we have a solution," said Maldonado when asked by AUTOSPORT if the team felt it had found any answers.

"But we have different solutions to test tomorrow with both cars and then we will see if we were right or not.

"We saw the problems, they are very clear, and we have some ideas to solve them. You never know about the conditions and the tyres, so we need to be careful and do our best."