After an impressive Qualifying performance at the Hungaroring, George Russell’s race day was far from easy, with the Williams Racing driver dropping down to eighteenth at the chequered flag.
The Mercedes-Benz protégé had started a remarkable twelfth for the Hungarian Grand Prix after playing a starring role in Qualifying, but a slow getaway saw him drop down the order, and ultimately, he was unable to beat anyone bar his team-mate Nicholas Latifi.
Russell admits the pace drop between Qualifying and the race is difficult to understand, particularly as the 2019 car usually showed better pace on Sunday afternoon’s than it did on Saturday’s. The Briton feels Williams need to address these concerns, although the biggest positive is how much closer the Grove-based outfit are to their rivals compared to twelve months ago.
“Firstly, we made a bad start in the wet and it was very tricky,” said Russell after the race in Hungary. “I think everyone on the inside struggled for whatever reason. From then on in, our race pace was really poor, we just need to understand what is going on.
“Last year it was the opposite, our race pace was better than the qualifying pace. Now we are pretty fast on the Saturday and struggle a lot on the Sunday. However, if we look at everything and see the steps we have made, especially on the Saturdays, we have got to be relatively pleased.
“There are plenty of positives, we just need to rectify the negatives and make our pace of the car a bit better across the ball.”
