Parr: Innovation will revive Williams

Having not won a race since 2004 and with its last championship victory now 13 seasons ago, Williams is pinning its 2011 hopes on a bold design with unique rear-end packaging.

The team has seen its sponsorship revenues decrease in recent seasons, but Parr insists that a lack of money will not automatically confine Williams to the midfield.

"You have to ask questions every year about how you move forwards," he told AUTOSPORT. "Our goal is not to be a midfield team.

"The reason that Red Bull [and Brawn] won is that they did the best job, the smartest job in any given season so it's not about money. They had to beat people with the same or more money.

"So even if you say, 'well the Brawn was funded by Honda money', which it was, and even if it is true that Red Bull has all the money of Red Bull behind it, the fact is that they didn't have more money than the teams they beat.

"It isn't just down to money, it's down to intelligence and team work and imagination and creative reading of the rules and all those important things that make F1 what it is.

"And I think it would be completely wrong for us to say that we are midfield because we don't have enough money. Nobody in this team believes that.

"The dynamics within all teams mean that you go through good phases and bad phases and I think we are climbing back up the grid. What I don't know is how smart and brave everyone else has been and we won't know until Australia.

"We have got 470 fantastic people in our team, we have got great facilities and so we should be able to build a competitive car and I very much hope that the FW33 is one of those."

Parr said that he had no qualms about supporting technical director Sam Michael's decision to take a radical approach to the FW33, which he feels is already being vindicated by testing results.

"I'm absolutely thrilled that it has paid off in terms of reliability and performance," said Parr.

"We did take some very ballsy decisions and I was absolutely supportive of Sam through that process to be as brave as he wanted to be.

"And in terms of how that is going to result on the track all I can say is that the tests we have done so far are encouraging but it's just too early to say."

Michael added that he felt the current season was the ideal time to try design innovations.

"When we started having standard diffusers and all these restrictions, I thought this is getting really dull. We're really dumbing down F1," he said.

"But it's doing the opposite because ... by not being able to work on the diffuser you then say 'right, here's something [else] that might give you two tenths', whether it's the gearbox or the exhaust or whatever. But you have to differentiate yourself because if you don't you're going to be at the back.

"So you all have nice simple cars but anyone that finds two tenths is suddenly going to be at the front because the gaps are so close. So I think it is having the opposite effect [to dumbing down], which I think is very good for F1.

"These are the most standardised regulations that F1 has ever had and the cars look completely different. Look at the different designs that everybody has got. I didn't predict it would be like that."