WILLIAMS have suffered another major setback after it was confirmed they will now miss the second day of winter testing.
With their car not ready for activity, the British team were the only outfit absent from the first meaningful action of pre-season at Barcelona's Circuit de Catalunya on Monday.
And deputy team principal, Claire Williams has revealed that Williams – which finished rooted to the foot of the constructors' championship last year – will not be on track until at least day three of this week's four-day first test.
"It is looking more likely than not that we will now not be in a position to run on track until Wednesday at the earliest," said Williams.
"This is obviously extremely disappointing, but it is unfortunately the situation we are in."
British rookie George Russell, who celebrated his 21st birthday last week, and the returning Robert Kubica were already playing catch-up for a team bidding to bounce back from last season's miserable campaign.
READ MORE: The David Smith column. Part IV: Masks and not so marginal gains as radiotherapy looms
Following this week's test, there will be just four further days of running before the new season starts in Melbourne on March 17.
Out on track, Ferrari driver Sebastian Vettel was the fastest out of the blocks on Monday.
The four-time world champion posted a time 1.7 seconds quicker than the best lap set on the opening day of testing last year.
Despite an early spin, Vettel had completed 72 laps, the equivalent of more than a race distance, by the lunch break.
Racing Point's Sergio Perez was second on the time sheets ahead of Mercedes driver Valtteri Bottas.
Five-time world champion Lewis Hamilton will take over testing duties from team-mate Bottas on Monday afternoon.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here