Grapevine: Williams laugh off Spain base reports

Instead, they found their enquiries snowball into wild reports that the team were actually considering relocating their entire test team there - with their base given to them in exchange for testing young Spanish drivers.

Although the test team relocation story sounded interesting, nobody who reported it had bothered checking with the team what the true situation was.

In fact, Williams make it clear that any suggestion of them moving their test team is well wide of the mark.

Williams's chief operations engineer Rod Nelson told Autosport: "The story came from a Spanish newspaper article, where they misunderstood the fact we were looking for storage space in the Valencia area because it's handy between the Jerez, Valencia and Barcelona area.

"We've got two Spanish tests during the season - it doesn't make sense to base a test team there."