George Russell yet again came agonisingly close to getting his first ever point for Williams Racing, after finishing eleventh at the Austrian Grand Prix. Team-mate Nicholas Latifi finished fifteenth.
After his best ever qualifying for Williams after starting in eighth, Russell slipped a few places early on in the race. Despite this the British driver battled hard to climb up to tenth, before a long battle with veteran Fernando Alonso.
Russell defended valiantly for so long but came up just short, Alonso overtook the Williams with only four laps to go, a bitter pill for Russell to swallow. Nevertheless Russell can be proud of his performance at the Red Bull Ring despite falling just short yet again.
“Today was so close, yet so far. I got off the line well at the start, but then Tsunoda had quite a big lock up and cut in front of me to avoid going into his teammate, so I had to get on the brakes and lost a couple of places. That didn’t really change the outcome of our race as there were faster cars that were always going to finish ahead of us.
“That P10 point would feel like a race victory for us, so I was fighting with everything I had. Of all the drivers to have behind you in this situation, Fernando wouldn’t be who you’d choose; he was flying and holding him off just wasn’t possible on my tyres. We’re all disappointed to miss out by such a small margin, but we’re making real progress and we’ll take the positives on to Silverstone.”
“It wasn’t a very eventful day from my side” – Nicholas Latifi
Latifi had an unadventurous grand prix, the Canadian who started eighteenth did well to get up to fifteenth, where from then on not much happened. The most dramatic moment for Latifi came after the race, where he was awarded three-penalty points and a thirty-second time penalty for failing to slow down enough whilst driving through a double-waved yellow flag section on the final lap.
All in all a lonely race for Latifi.
“It wasn’t a very eventful day from my side; we stayed out of trouble on the opening laps and then I ran on my own for most of the race. I felt like we were still lacking overall pace, but there were places where the car felt much better than last week, so we’ve clearly made some steps forward. We will go away and see what we can improve for next time out.”
