Malaysian GP: Williams could revert to 2012 exhaust as troubles continue

The Grove-based outfit is convinced that its current car troubles, which continued in Malaysian Grand Prix qualifying, are caused by it not mastering the impact of Coanda exhausts on its new FW35.

Although Williams is convinced the concept is the best way forward in the long term, technical director Mike Coughlan has revealed that going back to the exhaust design it had on last year's FW34 could be an option to help it in the short term.

AUTOSPORT analysis: how it all went wrong for Williams

"I think at the moment we are of the opinion that a FW34 type of car would be faster," said Coughlan, after seeing Pastor Maldonado fail to make it out of Q2 and Valtteri Bottas eliminated in Q1 in Malaysia.

"I don't we will go back to a FW34, but we might go back to a FW34-style exhaust system, and then treat Fridays as tests across cars. That is relatively easy for us.

"We will go back [to the factory] on Tuesday and have a complete rethink. Have we got too much to learn in a short time?"

Coughlan believes that if the team masters the exhaust concept, then it has a car that should be challenging for top 10 positions.

"We see enough pointers here and in the windtunnel that if we can fix something we will open up a great deal of potential," he said.

"We think fundamentally we have car to be in lower reaches of top 10. Here we were close but ultimately fell short, so we have some major things to fix and then we need to unharness the potential."

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