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George Russell says that the opening races of the 2019 season will be test sessions for Williams.
The Grove squad is the clear backmarker this year, continuing on from a tough 2018 campaign that saw it finish bottom of the constructors' championship.
Unless it changes its fortunes soon, it looks destined for the same fate this year as it couldn't get close to its rivals at the season-opening Australian Grand Prix last weekend.
Russell, who took part in his first F1 race, says he has no interest in fighting teammate Robert Kubica for the last two positions on the grid, and says everyone at the team is working to try and improve its current position.
“From a personal perspective, you’ve only got your team mate to compare against,” said Russell.
“Obviously I’m not disappointed to come out on top, but at the end of the day, I’m not interested in fighting him for last. We need to work to make this right.
"Personally I can take a bit of satisfaction from this weekend. I think [Saturday] was a really great day for me.
"I left the circuit with my head held high. [In the race] we knew what we were in for. It wasn’t a fair fight with Robert as he had a bit of damage at the start.
"For both of us, it was just bring the car home and learn as much as we can.
“We’ve just got to treat these as test sessions because we’re so far behind, and we’ve just got to understand it and almost try things to see what works and see what doesn’t, because for now it doesn’t really make much sense to try and optimise everything when we are that far off the pace.”
Although Williams is struggling, Russell says he enjoyed qualifying and driving an F1 car on the limit.
“I’d probably say qualifying was the best moment. The car wasn’t feeling terrible to drive and it was so enjoyable to put the car on the limit around a track like this.
"Such a thrill driving between these walls, bumpy track, when you hook something together there’s a huge amount of satisfaction and that’s really how I felt in qualifying.
Grand Prix of Belgium
C. Sainz jr
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mcbhargav
Posts: 1,332
Lets be honest. Technical director decides the direction of development ( and may even architect some solutions), but doesn't design, develop, test the solutions/parts. We must acknowledge and give some credit to the rest of the pool of employees, who are good at 'this understanding'.