George Russell is optimistic that the layout of the Bahrain circuit, and windy conditions, means Williams has already had its lowest ebb of the 2021 campaign.
Williams, last in the championship for the past three years, out-performed Haas in Bahrain but trailed the midfield contingent in qualifying and race trim.
Russell finished 14th of the 16 classified runners – in front of the penalised Sebastian Vettel and Haas’ Mick Schumacher – but was upbeat over the situation.
“I think it was a pretty well executed race to be honest, “he said. “That was probably the maximum we could have expected.
“As I said [during testing], it’s going to be a bit of a yo-yo season, and I do think this is probably the worst-case scenario so fingers cross it gets better from here.
“There were very windy conditions, 50 km/h winds, it’s very open, very exposed, and when you’re driving around at 300 km/h even a five km/h wind makes a difference, so you can imagine what what 50 km/h is like, with gusts of 60/70/80km/h.”
Russell is optimistic that Williams will be in a relatively stronger situation at the next round in Italy.
“Imola’s the next race really and it’s very different to Bahrain so you’re going from two ends of the spectrum,” he said.
“Bahrain’s got a lot of slow speed corners, very exposed, generally very windy. Imola is a lot of high-speed corners, the angle of those corners is less – more 90-degree corners as opposed to 180-degree corners as we see [in Bahrain] – and it’s very enclosed with all the trees and the buildings around.
“We’re going between two extremes really. I’m not necessarily saying Imola is at the top 10 [of Williams’ 2021 circuits] but it’s in the top half, let’s say.”
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