Williams 'turning performance around'

With Mark Webber sidelined by car damage caused by a wheel rim failure that pitched him off the track, Nico Rosberg struggled with over heating tyres and failed to make an impact at all.

But despite another non-score for the team, who have not finished in the points since the European Grand Prix, technical director Sam Michael thinks he saw enough evidence over the Magny-Cours weekend to feel the team are making steps forward.

And he believes that the tyre issue, which resulted in the shoulder of their Bridgestones overheating dramatically, will be cured in testing at Jerez in Spain this week.

"Something like that you can fix, because it doesn't happen all the time," he said. "I am quite sure with pressure or cambers we can sort this problem out really quickly.

"The performance is definitely turning around. We were stronger here than we were the last two or three races, but obviously we didn't score in the early races because of reliability so it is making us look worse now.

"But we will keep our heads down, bring performance to the car and understand where we are. We hope to get some finishes soon."

Although the result of the race was a major disappointment, Michael believes that without the tyre and wheel rim problem Webber would have easily finished in the top eight.

"We definitely were strong enough to score points, so Mark would definitely have been in the points.

"That is obviously a step forward from the last race but with our problems we had with the over-temperature on the tyres we couldn't finish and convert it into points. But we will go away, sort that out and get there."

When asked whether the pressure was increasing on him to deliver results soon, Michael said: "I don't think so, it has been like that for a while now. The pressure went right to the top and then it stayed there..."