Rubens admits Williams has work to do

Rubens Barrichello says Williams has to work hard on closing the performance gap to the leading teams after admitting he had hoped for more than a single point on his debut for the squad in Bahrain. The Brazilian veteran had been aiming to make up ground from his 11th place starting position in the opening stint as he was the first of the drivers free to select a fresh set of tyres. But he only picked up one place in the race as all the top four teams' cars finished leaving him under no illusions as to the work Williams has to do to improve its FW32. It's good to have a point, but in all honesty, we thought that we would do a little better when we arrived here, he said. So it's really all down to us, we can see that the competition is pretty fierce and there were no retirements among the leading cars. I think we finished around about where we deserved so it will be up to us to close up the gap. Rookie team-mate Nico Hulkenberg endured a frustrating baptism to racing in motorsport's top flight, the German losing ground on the first lap and then spinning into the gravel at turn six as he fought to make up ground. He recovered to finish a lap down in 14th but, while disappointed with the end to his debut grand prix weekend, believes he can take encouragement from the long-run pace he showed during practice It was a tough and difficult debut for me today, said the reigning GP2 champion. Right from the start, I had to take some evasive action to avoid a crash in turn two, which dropped me couple of places and a few laps later, I spun at turn six. Initially I thought there was something broken on the car, but it was not the case. I jumped the kerbs and maybe hurt the car a bit, as it was quite difficult to drive for the rest of what was a long and lonely afternoon for me. It's been a tough weekend, but the practice and long run pace has been good and we need to build on that.