Williams Racing’s acting Team Principal, Simon Roberts, has ended speculation about who will drive for the team in 2021, insisting the current line-up of George Russell and Nicholas Latifi will continue with them next season.
There had been plenty of speculation about the seat that Russell currently holds, with Mexican racer Sergio Pérez apparently in talks about coming in to replace him. The doubts were not helped by Roberts being non-committal to the drivers last week.
However, this week has seen him iron out the confusion and confirm that the contracts signed by Russell and Latifi earlier this year for 2021 will be honoured in full.
“I probably caused a bit of confusion last week, I’m sorry about that,” Roberts is quoted as saying by Motorsport.com. “We didn’t really want to comment on the driver position. But as George said, Claire [Williams] made the announcement earlier this year, nothing has changed.
“This is our driver line-up for this year and next year. We’re very happy with them, and we look forward to working with them in a continued way.”
Russell was not pleased about the speculation arising in the first place, but he is delighted that his place on the grid for 2021 has been confirmed.
“It’s never nice to hear any speculation that your job is potentially up for grabs,” Russell added. “But nevertheless, I was confident in what I could perform on-track and ultimately I had to do the talking on track.
“As Simon said, I was confident nothing would change moving into 2021, even with all the speculation going around. Like I said, I think a lot of the speculation was fed via other teams surrounding drivers to create these issues over the last couple of weeks.”
