Williams F1: Team principal James Vowles said it is ‘incredibly painful’ to miss the first week of testing

The car has now passed all its impact tests, Vowles added, and drivers Carlos Sainz and Alex Albon “stand shoulder to shoulder with me”.

“They’re clearly, as I am, disappointed,” said Vowles.

“They want to be out there testing the car, and whilst they’re in our driver and loop simulator in tandem now, to increase that programme, it isn’t the same.”

Vowles said the main problem was that the factory was unable to cope with the demand put on it by the car build process.

“It’s more of an output than anything else, of pushing not just the boundaries of design but the boundaries of just simply how many components can be pushed through the factory in a very short space of time,” said Vowles.

“The car we’ve built is about three times more complicated than anything we have put through our business beforehand.

“So, to put that in perspective, it means the amount of load going through our system is about three times what it used to be.

“And we started falling a little bit behind and late on parts. There are compromises you can make as a result of it.

“In addition to that, we have absolutely pushed the boundaries of what we’re doing in certain areas. And one of those is in certain corresponding tests that go with it.”

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

However, he said the team were on target to make it to the second pre-season test, which takes place in Bahrain on 11-13 February.

He also said he had “experts and specialists” working with Williams to try to improve their factory operations.