George Russell’s predictions for Williams in 2021

George Russell capped off the testing weekend with the 6th fastest time overall, but he said there’s no set evidence that Williams have closed the gap to the midfield teams over the break.

The Brit spent one day in the FW43B for testing, with the other two days getting filled by Roy Nissany (the Williams reserve driver) and his teammate Nicholas Latifi. He finished his day completing a long stint of 158 laps, saying “I think it was the longest day I’ve ever spent in an F1 car!” on Sunday evening.

“Eight hundred ad fifty kilometers would get you quite a long way around Europe probably, so I’m feeling pretty knackered now to be honest. But I think the team did a really good job these last few days, the car is reliable, we got through the test program, and lots to analyze.”

George put out an impressive best time of 1:30.117, but said that testing exposed the weaknesses of the Williams car. He stated that he didn’t expect the Williams to be fighting in the midfield battles just yet.

“I think we knew coming into this season, and it was sort of confirmed today that we believe our car is very sensitive to the wind, as most teams’ are, but [testing] sort of highlighted our issues, which has been positive in a way, to give us a chance to dig into the data. That was interesting and made it difficult, but nevertheless there are some good signs.”

“But equally it’s still early days. Kimi is looking very, very fast, no doubt, and the midfield guys are looking fast, so we’ll have to wait and see… There’s no signs as yet that we’ve closed the gap.”

“I think there will be a big swing for us. I think you’ll see quite a yo-yo effect for us this season; I think we’ll be fast at some events and slow at others, and… these conditions these past few days are sort of the worst conditions we would like to see for our race car.”