Webber boosted by Williams test

The Australian driver was one of five to make their debut with new teams at Barcelona last week. Ralf Schumacher (Toyota), Jacques Villeneuve (Sauber), Giancarlo Fisichella (Renault) and Marc Gene (Ferrari) all got their first taste of new machinery.

"Frank [Williams] and Patrick [Head] haven't said too much [to me] yet, although Frank was kind enough to apologise for not coming down for my first test," said Webber in Spain. "Patrick has made it clear what he wants: as many wins as possible. There's always pressure to perform and of course there's pressure here. But that pressure will come both ways: I'll be pushing the team hard, too.

Webber admits that his first on-track experience of being a Williams driver has changed his perspective on next season. "The mindset has changed," he said. "I felt that driving down the pitlane for the first time. I was thinking about wins. This is a team that knows about winning and how to win and there's a lot of potential in the car. You know that as soon as you drive it.

"It's faster than anything I have been in, that's for sure. It's just a little bit quicker everywhere and suddenly you put that together and there's the lap time. But there are problems too, for sure. There are already little things that we are digging up."

Webber says that beyond the excitement will come a lot of hard work to maintain the competitiveness that Williams displayed in Brazil, where Juan Pablo Montoya won the final race of the season for the team.

"I put a huge amount of energy into the smaller teams I've been in and it will be no different here. It is a different car and it is going to take a while to get used to it.

"It's pretty disciplined at Williams, but then it was at Jag, too. Both are extremely professional, but Williams has all that extra experience and you can sense that straight away. There's a lot of resources to draw on. They just have more ammunition stacked away; more information.

"They've been through the learning process over the past 30 years in a way that Jaguar hadn't. I've got the usual new car learning problems, but it felt very nice. It's a pretty stable car. It's very exciting for me to drive it, there's no question about that."