Drivers not to blame for Williams crisis - Lowe

Paddy Lowe has denied that Williams’ crisis is not being helped by the team’s controversial driver lineup.

The once-great British team has sunk to the bottom of the F1 pecking order this year, after saying no to Robert Kubica in favour of inexperienced drivers Sergey Sirotkin and Lance Stroll.

Technical boss Lowe admitted that, given Williams’ problems, the easiest way of solving them is by removing the "human factor" in laboratory tests.

"What I mean is that when the car is driven by real drivers, you need to take into account the quality of the driver behind the wheel. Because the drivers are different and interpret the car in different ways," he said in China.

"Our current drivers are quite inexperienced, but we are happy with their work and they’re not giving us any problems in terms of professionalism," Lowe added.

"And we cannot allow anything to detract from the fact that we were not able to build a good enough car," he said.

Lowe admitted that it would be easy for Williams to panic or become depressed, but work is already underway to solve the 2018 car’s problems.

"I can’t give a timeframe," he is quoted by Russian media, "but we are going to make significant progress in this first half of the season."