George Russell is cautious on Williams’ race potential after another highly impressive qualifying at the Hungarian Grand Prix.
After making Q2 for the first time in the rain-hit session last weekend in Austria, the Mercedes junior repeated it in the dry in Budapest, again narrowly missing out Q3 by just under two-tenths of a second.
Even so, Russell has some big names behind him in Esteban Ocon and the Red Bull of Alex Albon and was clearly loving the Williams’ performance on the twisty Hungaroring.
“It was great – the car was feeling good again,” he said post-session. “P12, a tenth or two from Q3. Great! Really, really, really great.
“P12, considering where we were last year, was incredible.
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“I love driving this track flat out. The car came alive in qualifying in these cooler conditions and I had a lot of fun out there. Again I did not expect to be this fast but the car was feeling great and I had a good rhythm.
“It was a shame about the Q2 lap, we had some traffic and I think Q3 was possible today, which would have been amazing,” Russell admitted.
“It’s actually annoying to miss Q3 by such a small margin. I’d prefer to be a bit further away because it feels a bit frustrating.”
After the woes of last year, which saw Williams often a second off the rest of the pack, Russell says recent results are motivating the team to keep pushing.
“This is a track we know on paper does suit our car the best out of all of them, so I don’t think we need to get carried away with two really great qualifying performances,” he claimed.
“They were great for different reasons in the last two weeks but nevertheless a big morale booster.”
The big challenge now is repeating the performance of qualifying on a Sunday, which hasn’t been the case so far this season.
“I think we need to understand it because we’ve definitely got an advantage in the quali format versus in the race-spec,” Russell said.
“I mean, the last two race weekends, in the race we’ve clearly been the slowest car, yet we’ve managed to qualify a tenth or two from Q3. We need to understand how to unlock that performance from quali into the race.”
Still, there is one element that could spice things up for the Briton.
“Fingers crossed we get a bit of rain tomorrow; we could do with that and we could be on for a good result. I am ready to fight, and hopefully we have a successful race.”
