Williams' Sergey Sirotkin says his day started off positively before turning into "one of the worst" after a difficult and disappointing second practice at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
Sirotkin ran inside the top 10 for much of FP1, eventually finishing just one hundredth off McLaren's Fernando Alonso, putting in one of the most encouraging displays of the season so far for Williams.
Despite improving on his own time by more than a second in FP2, the Russian rookie struggled to get representative tyre data due to traffic and a limited tyre allocation.
"There’s a very big contrast between the beginning of the day and the end," said Sirotkin. "FP1 was positive with the work we did and the information we collected. It was good to have both cars in the top 10, so that was a good start to the day.
In full: Azerbaijan GP FP2 results
"We were less lucky in FP2. I was a bit limited with the amount of tyres I had, because I had just one qualifying tyre and the rest were used primes, so that didn’t help me get the best from the low-fuel performance runs.
"The high-fuel runs were very messy with the traffic. I did a couple of clean laps, but I don’t think we got the best numbers for the life of the tyre, and for the wear, and overheating.
"That’s a bit of a shame because it started very well in the morning, but this session was one of the worst so I’m quite disappointed with that."
Team-mate Lance Stroll believes there's a lot more to come from Williams and said the car felt "much better" at the Baku City Circuit than at previous races.
"It was a tricky day for everyone. We saw a lot of lock-ups and a lot of yellow flags. There was a lot of traffic out there, as expected, but it was still a positive day in many ways," said the Canadian.
"We are still not where we want to be. At the same time, we saw some improvement in FP1 and then in FP2 we dropped back a little bit, but it is still much better than where we were over the last few events.
"I think there is still a lot more to come, so we will see tomorrow what the others do and where we are in the field."
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