Williams F1: The race promises to be better than qualifying

The first day of the Turkish Grand Prix was studious for Williams F1 in Istanbul. George Russell is pretty confident for the race but admits the FW43B lacks pace on one lap, which should make it more difficult for him to perform well in qualifying.

“Our pace with a lot of fuel seemed pretty solid today, with little fuel it was not as good” said the British after the first two practice sessions.

“We need to go into more detail in the data tonight in order to find something for tomorrow, but with rain forecast for the night and morning it may mean the track conditions will reset before qualifying. “

“We have to seize these opportunities where the conditions change to our advantage and we did it very well in the last few races. It will be a very tricky race on Sunday because no car has done more. 12 laps in a row with a single train of tires and we have to do a lot more than that during the Grand Prix. “

Nicholas Latifi, for his part, notes progress on the grip: “The runway surface is not as I expected, especially from what I saw during the recce yesterday.”

“But I say this positively: Obviously the grip is a lot higher than last year, and it actually looks a lot higher than on most other tracks in general. “

He enjoyed it anyway: ” Now that the grip is this is a really fun circuit to drive, very fast and smooth. It’s a pretty nice feeling and it exceeded my expectations. “

” I always have trouble putting the tires in the right window, especially with low fuel. There is work to be done but the car is not far from the right settings. There are definitely some adjustments to be made, but we can get off to a good start tomorrow. “

Dave Robson, Team Performance Director, elaborates on today’s schedule: “As we expected, the track conditions are much better than last year, which allowed us to focus on the car’s tuning.”

“Managing tires with a lot of fuel is a bit tricky, especially in turn eight, and we have a little work to do tonight to figure out how best to deal with this problem on Sunday. “

” This afternoon we weren’t as quick as we hoped for it with little fuel, but we are convinced that we can make progress. Our pace with fuel remained reasonable and we made some progress in tire management. “