"I think it's time to go back to the drawing board," warns Carlos Sainz as he laments the FW47's lack of pace.

Dropped by Ferrari in favour of Lewis Hamilton, though there were few available berths, many were surprised when Sainz chose Williams.

However, the Spaniard appeared to have made a good decision as he took two podiums on his way to helping the Grove outfit claim 'best of the 'rest' behind the well-established big guns, McLaren, Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull.

The new season, and new regulations, however haven't seen the multiple champions continue where it left off, for currently Williams is eighth in the standings, its best result coming in the midst of the chaos that was Monaco.

Looking ahead, as teammate Alex Albon expresses a lack of confidence in his car, and is already predicting a tough weekend in Austria, Sainz claims that major action is required.

"I think it's time to go back to the drawing board and start bringing more things to the car, because clearly, on a medium-speed track, we are very far off," he admits.

Referring to his home race, he says: "Realistically speaking, we expected it to be hard. Looking back however, it was a bit of a shock how far off we are in medium and high-speed corners.

"Partly, it's due to weight, but even more importantly, it's downforce in the car," he adds.

"I think it was a massive... I don't want to call it a shock, not even a wake-up call, because we knew it, but a realisation that we are really far from where we should be, where we targeted to be," he says of the gap to Williams rivals.

The one positive sign, at a time the Spaniard is already being linked with rival teams, is that there are updates in the pipeline.

"I know what is coming, and for sure, what normally comes from this team really tends to work," he says. "But at the same time, I'm not sure if it's enough to cut the gap that we have on this sort of track. So, I think we need to do more than we are doing already.

"Every week, for the team, it is super-important to find points of downforce, or kilos of weight," he adds, "because although I realise that the team is pushing flat-out and we are all pushing with everything we have, we probably need even more. So, we need to focus on that."