Sunday’s checkered flag couldn’t come fast enough for Williams after a miserable weekend in Azerbaijan.
Following expensive crashes in practice and qualifying, George Russell and Robert Kubica finished two laps down at the back of the field.
Even the usual chaos that normally ensues in Baku didn’t occur as a surprisingly subdued race created no opportunities for a strong result.
“[Sunday] was slightly better, but, overall, Baku has probably been the worst weekend of the year for us,” Russell reflected.
“Our Baku set-up didn’t work as we anticipated. So, all our eyes or on Barcelona now and hopefully we will be closer to the pack.”
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Kubica’s race was doomed from the start as he left the pit-lane too soon and picked up a drive-through penalty.
From that point, it was simply about getting to the end.
“The guys have done an amazing job with the difficult situation we are in,” he explained, referring to the repairing of his car after the crash on Saturday.
“I just tried to bring the car home, I’m happy that I achieved that, but unfortunately we had more issues than in China.
“One part of the car wasn’t really giving me confidence in the first part of the race, I was really bad on the braking.
“I had this feeling already on Friday so we will have to sort at least this because it is taking out my confidence.”
Perhaps the only bright spot at the end of the weekend was news from race promoter Arif Rahimov that Williams will be compensated for the cost of the damage to Russell’s car in practice.
The team had, had to change his chassis after he ran over a loose drain cover which had been lifted by Charles Leclerc, an incident which caused the cancellation of the opening session.