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Williams must make further step - Maldonado

Pastor Maldonado was unhappy with Williams' pace at Spa-Francorchamps © Associated Press

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Pastor Maldonado says Williams needs to make a further step forward of "three or four tenths" to overhaul a number of midfield teams.

Williams has only scored one point all season thanks to Maldonado's 10th place in Hungary. Maldonado failed to score in Belgium after a collision with both Force Indias but, after admitting the Williams pace was not good enough at Spa, he believes the team should target big gains in terms of its place in the competitive order.

"[The pace] was really bad all weekend," Maldonado said. "I think we need to keep improving performance. We were not so competitive … during the race I have been doing very well in the last couple of races and recovering a lot. But sometimes you cannot expect that the driver can do everything. You just need to push very hard to have a quick car, a solid car that's consistent. At the moment we are struggling with the pace in qualy and the race; we need to push harder than before to close the gap to the top ten.

"I think it's possible, we're not that far away. Now the gaps seem to be more close against the teams. We are quite close and if we improve by a couple of tenths - three or four tenths - that will put us in a good position to fight for the top ten. But at the moment it's not like that."

However, Maldonado admitted making that progress would be difficult and said he is unsure if new chief technical officer Pat Symonds can make an immediate impact.

"Who knows? The car is not competitive and he is not magic. He's a very experienced technician and is a good engineer, and for sure we are expecting him to restructure departments and some things in the car to push more in terms of engineering, but we never know if we can improve or not. For sure we will do 100% and even more to improve before the end of the season."

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