Williams sees ‘good opportunities’ despite massive crashes

Williams believes it will have “some good opportunities coming” in Formula 1 this year after displaying encouraging pace at Imola, in spite of its two hefty accidents.

Williams has finished at the foot of the Constructors’ Championship for the last three years and its last top 10 result came at the rain-hit Germany round in 2019.

But at Imola it secured its best overall qualifying result in dry conditions since the 2018 Monza round, with George Russell 12th, and Nicholas Latifi 14th.

Latifi crashed out on a wet opening lap while Russell’s collision with Bottas came shortly after switching to slicks, at which point they were contesting ninth position.

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“The car was good, both drivers good from the off, qualifying couldn’t have gone a lot better,” explained Williams’ Head of Vehicle Performance Dave Robson.

“Obviously [Yuki] Tsunoda made a mistake which was a gift for us, but otherwise all the places we got were achieved on merit and in the race we had a good chance to score some points.

“The mixed conditions were not really ideal but we took them in our stride, so to finish with nothing is obviously deeply frustrating.

“The positive is the car was good, the pace was good and at least the accident came as a result of us attacking and all of the cars to attack it was a Mercedes, which is not something we’ve been able to do for a long time. So it is deeply frustrating but a good weekend.”

Williams explained earlier in the year that its design philosophy with the FW43B means it is expecting its performance level to vary through the course of 2021.

Robson believes the conclusions from the opening two rounds suggested its pre-season prediction was correct and that it will have more prosperous weekends – as well as some rounds where it struggles.

“We’ve learned a lot more about the car,” said Robson. “The conditions were very different to Bahrain, so we knew this would be a good opportunity to put it through its paces in more normal conditions.

“The car did behave differently and better, both drivers [had] much more confidence and were able to push it.

“[You have] the momentum you get when the car is behaving well, then the drivers have more confidence, everything gets easier and you get quicker as a result.

“There’s going to be circuits ahead where the car behaves more like it did in Bahrain, others more like here [at Imola].

“We are definitely pleased to see it behave better here and know we’ve got some opportunities coming.

“I don’t think we relied on luck this weekend, we were there on merit.”