Williams aim to repeat Melbourne showing

Fresh from a morale-boosting podium finish for Nico Rosberg, the team are confident that the speed of the FW30 is enough for them to put pressure on BMW Sauber.

"Well, clearly the McLarens, Ferrari and BMW are at the front," he explained. "BMW look a little quicker than us, but not by a long way and it's a position we can maybe get in and have a bit of a fight with them."

Head's upbeat attitude comes with him convinced the team could have done even better in Australia had they not lost a lot of running on Friday because of gearbox problems. That lack of mileage almost certainly hindered their progress over the weekend.

Looking forward to Malaysia, Head said: "Malaysia is a very tough track on the car and it shows up aerodynamic performance a bit more than Melbourne. But I would hope we can still hold position.

"We don't have much new coming to the car, but equally in Australia we really can't say that we optimised the car. We shot ourselves in the foot on Friday when we would normally test, so it wasn't really representative.

"I hope in Malaysia we can give ourselves a Friday and maybe get a bit more out of the car."

And Head has backed Kazuki Nakajima to get over the dramas that hit his first race of the season - having got caught up in two collisions during the race.

"He's done a very good job and he's generally been very calm and cool on the track," explained Head. "I didn't see either of his incidents and he lost two noses but I have no idea whether those incidents were down to him.

"But he's an intelligent guy as well as a good driver, and he'll know whether he can do better without those problems."