Williams' Sergey Sirotkin believes the Russian Grand Prix was the most painful of his maiden Formula 1 campaign so far after finishing last in his home event.
During his first home race in F1 in Sochi, Sirotkin was unable to make any headway after a rough start and a clash with Renault's Carlos Sainz was the beginning of a troublesome afternoon.
While aiming to try and score more points after a difficult campaign in 2018, the young Russian felt everything went wrong over the duration of the event and described it as 'very painful' after getting stuck in traffic and couldn't progress any further.
"A very painful race," said Sirotkin. "The most painful race of the year.
"I think we could have picked up some very good points from this race, in terms of where we’ve been and where the pace was. But from the start, every single bit went wrong for us.
"We’ve always been in the worst possible position on the track with the worst possible traffic situation.
"I think a few things we managed very well, but despite that, the whole race has turned around against us and it was a very painful moment for me."
Chief technical officer Paddy Lowe admits the Grove-based outfit was trying to beat McLaren over the course of the 53 laps as both were running at a similar pace.
However, Williams was outfoxed as McLaren dumped the degrading ultrasoft tyre earlier and got ahead of both Sirotkin and team-mate Lance Stroll which meant both cars were unable to pass after getting stuck in the turbulent air behind.
Overall, it was a really frustrating afternoon," added Lowe. "We’re obviously not racing where we’d like to race. We had the pace to beat both McLaren’s, but we were caught out by the severe graining on our ultrasoft tyre.
"This happened to McLaren as well, but they reacted better to it than we did.
"Consequently, we were fighting one on one with McLarens all afternoon and were unable to overtake whilst in their wake.
"Otherwise, we would have been able to improve our finishing positions, most of all for Sergey, who wouldn’t have finished so far down in his home race. We got two cars home, and we will keep learning and keep moving forward."
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