Pastor Maldonado admits Williams enjoyed a 'wonderful' first test with new FW35 car

Pastor Maldonado confessed "things are looking quite good" for Williams on the back of a successful first week of testing with their FW35 - but stressed it was still too early to speculate about how much they may have improved.

The new Williams features a number of new features - and as things stand a controversial vane in its exhaust exit - and Maldonado added: "We have some experimental things in the car, we have been spending out time on trying to get some data. We sacrificed some runs to [get to] know the car and prepare some tests for the future but it's looking quite good. It's looking quite good." Now with just four more days from next Thursday in which to prepare the car on track for the start of the season, the Venezuelan explained that set-up work would take priority. "[We need to focus on]everything, especially more on the set-up," he said. "We didn't try different try different set-ups here because it was very important to put mileage on the car. But even then we had a reasonable set-up on the car which was not bad. We can improve it still, there is a lot of margin, and next week we will push in this direction." After completing a race simulation earlier in the week, Maldonado admitted he had expected to complete more pitstops during it, although didn't feel Williams were particularly experiencing fewer tyre issues than anyone else. "We've been surprised as well. We planned a few more pitstops for the race sim, but we did less," he replied when asked to reflect on the long run. "We need to check the condition of the others as well but we knew that all the teams are tying to survive with the tyres. These tyres are very sensitive, as soon as you pushed very hard on them they got destroyed immediately. The problem is graining for everybody, especially on this track the long, fast corners, but it's the same for everyone. "I've been around just looking at other cars and they have more or less a similar problem for us. Maybe we can improve on the tyres but everyone can improve."