The good news is that Williams drivers Robert Kubica and George Russell have finished every race so far this season.

However, while the Grove outfit has completed 97.3% of the racing laps thus far, the fourth highest amount, neither driver has looked even close to scoring a point. Furthermore, aside from grid penalties, for the foreseeable future the team appears to have a 'reserved' notice on the back row of the grid.

Team boss Claire Williams refuses to get despondent however, insisting that progress is being made and that a mid-season upgrade will help her team close the gap to its rivals.

"We can see some light at the end of the tunnel now," she said. "It may be slow but we all know that it takes time to bring performance to your car.

"There's definitely a lot of good work going on back at the factory that people may not necessarily be seeing yet," she added. "The aero team are doing a great job finding performance in the tunnel and we're going to be bringing that to races over the coming weeks and months with a package coming midway through the season that we will hope will bring some significant performance to us. There are definitely signs of improvement."

Asked if there had been any thought of abandoning the current season and switching focus to 2020, she was adamant.

"No, nothing is a write-off at Williams, ever," she replied. "It never has been and it never will be, regardless of where we are. It's just not our mind-set.

"We don't write a season off just because we aren't doing well," she continued. "For us, at the moment, we're really looking at '19 and '20 very much as almost two seasons combined.

"It's just evolution and development and we've just got to keep bringing performance at each and every race. We've definitely seen that we've done that, we're closing the gap to the ninth-placed team (Alfa Romeo) and we've got to keep doing that as the season progresses."