Speaking to ESPN, Smith said: “We are making the 2013 car very much a development of the current car. There's not a fundamental shift in what we're doing and therefore we are going to develop this car a little bit further into this season than we would have done.”
At Silverstone the different exhaust, which is a key factor, made its debut. So far the now Leafield-based squad has struggled to fine-tune the parts.
Smith added: “You have to be aware of any performance losses you might be factoring into the package as well as any performance gains. I think that we're focusing on that to release more performance from the overall package. It's fairly circuit dependent as well because you're working with an exhaust system where it's quite easy to induce losses, from a power perspective, by tweaking the exhaust and at some circuits engine power is obviously at more of a premium than others.”
