George Russell played down his chances of getting Williams beyond the first round of qualifying this weekend, something the team failed to do all season last year.
However he was encouraged by the performance of his FW43 over a race stint.“We seem relatively competitive in high fuel,” said Russell. “Lower fuel, I was pleased in my lap, but we’re still a good couple of tenths behind.
“But definitely a big improvement on last year, I think, at this stage. That’s all we can can hope for at the moment. I don’t want to get our hopes up. At the end of the day we are still the slowest car on the grid but we’re going in the right direction.”
AlphaTauri, Haas and Alfa Romeo could be targets for Williams on race pace, said Russell. “I think our high fuel pace was definitely encouraging,” he said. “We were on pace with I think Raikkonen and Magnussen and Gasly potentially, just from some little things I’ve seen, I’ve not looked into the details. I think that was promising.
“Like I said, we’re still quite a step behind in low fuel pace and as we know in Formula 1, mainly how you qualify is how your weekend goes. So we are going in the right direction and that was our main focus.”
His quickest lap during practice yesterday was almost half a second slower than the 15th-quickest time, which is indicative of the lap needed for a place in Q2. Asked whether he thought they can make that up in qualifying Russell said: “Realistically, probably not.
“I was pretty pleased with the car on low fuel, I was pretty pleased with my lap, and we’re still a number of tenths behind, let’s say, a Q2 position.
“So maybe we’ll focus more towards the race because we know the car suits the race better than it does for quali. Maybe that’s something we should focus on more as we know even if we fully optimise quali, we won’t really be there.”
2020 F1 season
- Pictures: Wrecked chassis from Grosjean’s Bahrain fireball crash to go on display
- Bottas vs Rosberg: Hamilton’s Mercedes team mates compared after 78 races each
- F1 revenues fell by $877 million in Covid-struck 2020 season
- Hamilton and Mercedes finally announce new deal for 2021 season
- F1 audience figures “strong” in 2020 despite dip in television viewers
BasCB (@bascb)
4th July 2020, 9:04
Well, I sure hope that Russel manages to beat a few cars and at least get close to the times needed for Q2. And then I hope we can see him get somewhere during the race.
What is the weather like by the way? Does that give any shot at getting lucky?
Jere (@jerejj)
4th July 2020, 9:10
@bascb Should be dry and warm with 24 C as the highest forecasted for today and 27 C for tomorrow.
BasCB (@bascb)
4th July 2020, 9:24
Ah, so no rain then. I guess there might be a few kerbs that are still slippery, but it will be a pretty straight forward session then. Thanks for the update on that @jerejj
synonymous
4th July 2020, 10:20
Just to see Russell during the race would be enough for me.
Sensord4notbeingafanboi (@peartree)
4th July 2020, 9:18
Why didn’t williams straight up copied the merc, apparently it is easy. Now with the rules frozen, williams is condemned to be last for 2021.
ColdFly (@)
4th July 2020, 9:59
Russell might just find that little bit extra with the 4 race wins under his belt ;)