Williams F1: Team principal James Vowles said it was “very painful” to miss the first week of testing

Vowles added that the car has now passed all crash tests, and that drivers Carlos Sainz and Alex Albon are “standing side by side with me.”

“They’re obviously as disappointed as I am,” Fowles said.

“They want to be there to test the car, and while they are in our driver and loop simulator program side by side now, to augment that program, it’s not the same.”

Vowles said the main problem was that the factory could not meet the demand placed on it by the process of manufacturing the car.

“It’s more of an output than anything else, pushing not only the limits of the design, but the limits of the number of components that can be pushed through the factory in a very short period of time,” Fowles said.

“The car we’ve built is about three times more complex than anything we’ve done in our business previously.

“So, to put that into perspective, that means the amount of load going through our system is about three times what it was before.

“And we’re starting to fall behind a little bit on parts. There are compromises you can make as a result of that.”

“In addition, we have completely pushed the boundaries of what we do in certain areas. One of those is in some of the corresponding tests that go along with it.”

However, he said the team was close to reaching the second pre-season test, which will be held in Bahrain on February 11-13.

“We could have made the Barcelona test so simple,” Fowles added. “But in doing so, I had to turn the impact on spare parts, components and upgrades across Bahrain on its head.” [the first race in] Melbourne, and beyond.

“And the assessment of that was that because of running in the cold and wet Barcelona conditions, against doing a (podium) test, versus the reserve position, and frankly, there were no points for running in the shakedown test, we made the decision, and I stand by it, that the right thing to do is to make sure that we arrive in Bahrain, properly prepared, and prepared in Melbourne as well.”

Vowles did not directly answer a question about whether the car had significantly exceeded the minimum weight limit, saying it was impossible to respond to “rumblings in the media” because it was not possible to know the answer until the car was assembled.

He also said he has “experts and specialists” working with Williams to try to improve the plant’s operations.