George Russell believes Williams can still achieve something in 2019 despite remaining at the back of the grid.
The British outfit has been dealing with a poorly conceived car since the start of winter testing and only began bringing updates last weekend in Spain.
However, precisely because the FW42 has been so tricky to optimise, Russell knows that the true potential in the car remains unknown.
“I think so yeah. The car is not where we want to be,” he told Motorsport Week on if Williams’ season still had a purpose.
“It’s not like we’re three seconds off the pace and the car feels great, the car doesn’t feel good, so there’s hope that if we improve the balance feeling, make it more driveable for myself and Robert then the performance should come.”
Also Read:
- Latifi responds to rumours linking him to Kubica’s Williams seat
- Williams drivers ‘better off’ not pushing the limit of 2019 car
The Mercedes junior had stated that the Spanish Grand Prix would determine if Williams had “hope” when it came to closing the gap to the midfield this season.
And in qualifying that appeared the case when Russell was only 0.4s behind P18 driver Antonio Giovinazzi.
In the race, however, the pace was still lacking.
“I think we probably got our hopes up a bit after qualifying,” he acknowledged. “I think our realistic quali pace was probably not as close as it was.”
