Symonds: Williams unlikely to win in 2015

Williams' chief technical officer Pat Symonds has lamented the team's failure to score race victories in 2014, and admits they are also unlikely to win this season.

While Mercedes were in a different class last year, Williams were often the "best of the rest" and Valtteri Bottas and Felipe Massa scored nine podiums between them.

However, they came up short in terms of victories with Red Bull's Daniel Ricciardo the only non-Mercedes driver to win last year.

The start of the 2015 season has not gone as expected as the Grove squad have fallen behind Ferrari in the pecking order.

"Are we in that position [to win races]? No we are not," Symonds told Sky Sports F1.

"In 2015 we have a couple of teams, one of which is significantly in front of us and the other is the one which has put itself in the position of picking up the pieces when things go wrong.

"Interestingly, last year we probably were in the right position. But on the three occasions when Mercedes did fail it happened to be Red Bull that picked up the pieces. It could just as easily have been Williams."

Although things are not looking good in the short-term, Symonds is confident they are heading in the right direction and will eventually return to the top step of the podium.

"That is not a position we want to be in, it is not a position we want to go racing in, we want to be racing at the front and we want to be racing for wins so that is what our long term strategy is based around," he added.

"I think we can be quite successful at it because we have thought it through quite carefully. It is not a sort of random thing of let’s go racing and see what happens. We have plans in place which I believe will improve our competitiveness and will give us the wins."