The FW35 was faced with a difficult debut when the
Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile declared its exhaust system to be illegal the day the car was launched, forcing the team to revise design. Despite this setback,
Pastor Maldonado and
Valtteri Bottas declared themselves to be happy with the development of the car after completing its winter testing programme. However, the scheduled updates that the team introduced for the
first race in Australia did not work as planned, with Maldonado declaring the car to be "undriveable", and that the team had set themselves back three years, though he did acknowledge that his struggles with the car may have been down to a combination of the characteristics of the
Melbourne Grand Prix Circuit and the team's inability to find a proper car setup for the extreme conditions experienced over the race weekend. Nevertheless, the team made the decision to revert the FW35 back to its launch specification before the race. 2013 was a massive disaster for the team, similar to
2011. The team was eliminated in Q1 mostly along with
Marussia and
Caterham, and failed to score a point until
Hungary, when Maldonado finished 10th. Bottas, on the other hand, qualified an impressive third in
Canada, but could only finish 14th, and he failed to score a point until
Austin, when he finished 8th. The team finished 9th in the Constructors’ Championship, with 5 points, their equal-worst season. ==Livery==