Williams’ George Russell says his pace during Formula 1 practice in Hungary was realistic, but cautioned against raising expectations for the team.
Williams has spent the 2019 campaign mired to the rear of the pack though managed to provisionally pick up its first point last weekend in the wet/dry German Grand Prix.
Williams has frequently been substantially off the pace in 2019 but on Friday in Hungary Russell was 17th in FP1, just two-tenths down on Antonio Giovinazzi and faster than Lance Stroll.
In a rain-hit FP2 Russell again took 17th, finishing within a tenth of Stroll, and ahead of Norris.
“I think so,” said Russell on whether the FW42’s pace was realistic.
“I think we made a decent step forward with understanding the tyres a little bit, it’s different at every race, we need to learn as much as we can, but it’s definitely feeling better than it did last week.
“It’s [better tyre usage] not solving our issues, we’re still going to be at the back of the grid, but hopefully closer if we can take today’s result into tomorrow.”
Russell was also enthused over Williams’ gains in wet conditions during FP2, believing a revised set-up addressed issues he encountered last weekend at Hockenheim.
“I went from feeling like a rain master to an amateur between the two set-ups… I felt like a complete amateur in the rain last week,” he said.
“It’s always tricky in the rain to get the tyres in the right window, it’s clear today we did the back to back set-up [evaluations] and there’s about 2.5s difference between the two.
“We’re not talking small numbers here but we got it wrong last week, hopefully in the future we can get it right.”
