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Williams' new signing George Russell has expressed his relief at being able to complete 119 laps and finish 9th fastest in the new FW42. The team were late starting the first test because of build delays with their new car and Russell described today as a "proper day one".
The team had only managed 88 laps on the previous test with a day and a half of running. The total was split, 40 laps by Russell and 48 laps by Kubica who is due back in the car on Wednesday. Russell had said that the aim was for the team to hit the ground running on week 2.
"After the last couple of weeks, it's a huge relief to get a day like today. We learned so much about the car at lower fuel and higher fuel, it gives us such a good indication moving forward into the next few days, and for the guys back at the factory who are designing the upgrades."
Russell says that although the car isn't perfect he can feel it's potential and also that today's progress hasn't made up for the issues the team faced last week. He commented that the other teams are fine-tuning their cars and we are needing to understand ours.
The rookie added: "But I feel we're in a good spot. The car isn't in a perfect window right now but I feel like it's definitely got the potential. I think everybody's happy with today's performance- not in term of lap times but in term of no issues."
Russel spoke about the issues that the team were facing. He said that the balance of the car wasn't correct when running the softer compound tyres but added that it was only normal at this stage of the car's development.
"There was no reason to worry we didn't find the lap time we should have done because that should come. There's definitely room for improvement on the softer compounds but we've only ran two sets of C3, one set of C4 and one C5 with lower fuel."
Russell finished by adding that the team were not too worried about their status due to the different conditions expected at the first two Grand Prix. He stressed that Williams is concentrating on the aero runs and making sure their reliability is good.
"Everything you do in testing you can only take with a pinch of salt because the temperature here is going to be much much cooler than it will be when we arrive in Australia and Bahrain. All of the races are much, much hotter."
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