Williams turn more attention to 2008 car

By Alan Baldwin

LONDON (Reuters) - Williams will dedicate more resources to improving their current Formula One car after recent poor performances, co-owner Patrick Head has said.

"We've been sort of switching quite a lot of attention towards 2009 and our aero programme has been working in part on 2009 for quite some time," he told reporters at last weekend's British Grand Prix.

"We recently moved the majority of the aero programme to be on 2009 but we are in the process of retro-putting some attention back to 2008 because we need to do better than we are doing at the moment."

The former champions, who started the season with a podium when Germany's Nico Rosberg came third in Australia, have suffered a string of disappointing results with the car quick at some circuits and lacking performance at others.

Rosberg has also failed to score a point in his last four races, crashing in Monaco and also in Canada where he ran into the back of Lewis Hamilton's McLaren in the pit lane after the Briton had already collided with Kimi Raikkonen's Ferrari.

His Japanese team mate Kazuki Nakajima, eighth at Silverstone on Sunday, has now scored the same number of points (eight) in his first full season.

Williams are sixth in the constructors' championship but only a point ahead of Renault and two clear of Honda in a tight midfield battle.

The Toyota-powered team ended last season fourth overall after McLaren were stripped of all their points for a spying controversy and Head said it would be a tough challenge to retain that position.