George Russell says Williams still expect to be slowest in Australia despite a much-improved winter compared to 2019.
The British team often featured mid-pack on the timesheets in Barcelona, raising hopes that perhaps the team will at least be competing to escape Q1, perhaps battling with the like of Haas and Alfa Romeo.
However, it also seems likely that Williams was running perhaps lower on fuel than their midfield rivals, based on Russell’s assessment.
“No doubt we’re in a better position, but I think realistically, we are still the slowest car,” he said as testing concluded.
“We’re not going to get carried away with ourselves, but we’ve definitely reduced the gap, that’s all we could have hoped for over the winter.
“We’ll go into Melbourne and see, but don’t expect to see us in Q2 or Q3.
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“We’ve definitely improved but expectations are all under control,” Russell added.
“Last year when we outperformed our car we were still qualifying 19th and finishing 19th, so I hope this year when people slip up and we perform well, that’s when we can take the opportunities.
“I know where we’ve gained, but quantifying it versus the other teams is difficult.”
As for deputy team boss Claire Williams, she too is pleased to be in a much stronger position heading to Melbourne.
“I’m feeling a lot happier, probably inevitably, it won’t come as a surprise to anyone,” Williams said at the final day of testing.
“Things at Williams have definitely taken a step forward, but that’s off the back of a lot of hard work that everybody in the team has done over the last 12 months to ensure that was the case.
“We all know that we’ve still got a lot of hard work to do to achieve our ultimate goals, which is to get Williams back to where we want to see it. That’s podiums and race wins but that reality is way off,” she conceded.
“This year, the target is to make clear progress. Just coming to testing and achieving what we have done over the past six days demonstrates the step towards that. We’ve got to get to Melbourne to see where we truly are.”
If Williams did have one issue during testing it wasn’t of their own making as engine supplier Mercedes struggled with reliability during the six days of running.
The Grove-based squad alone used three engines and even that third unit was troublesome on the final day.
“Obviously [the engine problems are] not ideal, but it’s one of those things. Mercedes is pushing the limits at the moment, and I’m sure they’ll go back and review everything,” Russell commented.
“It made some funny noises and I started losing a bit of power. I don’t know if there’s an official word.
“We had planned to do two full race sims, and we got one-and-a-half in. Still loads of laps. We still got a full race sim in at the end of the day, I think, I don’t know exactly.”
