Williams cancels plans for early shakedown with new car

The Grove-based outfit had been scheduled to use up one of its filming days to give its new FW42 a short run before the start of pre-season testing at Barcelona on Monday.

But with the outfit running behind its original schedule, it has elected to scrap the shakedown run so it can ensure it is fully ready for proper testing.

Deputy team principal Claire Williams said: "As anyone would expect, we have had an extremely aggressive engineering programme over the winter.

"As such, we have taken the decision not to run our car during our filming day this weekend in order to allow the team to maximise the time at the factory before we head to Barcelona for the first day of the test on February 18."

Williams is not the only team whose car build schedule is running late, with Renault admitting on Tuesday that it could also be forced to abandon a shakedown it hoped to do in Spain on Saturday.

Renault F1 managing director Cyril Abiteboul said: "Sometimes we are vocal about the late change of regulation and this is the harsh reality of that late change of regulations. I believe that we are not the only team to be in that situation."