George Russell, Williams, Circuit de Catalunya, 2019

Russell “proud” of Williams crew for pulling all-nighter

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In the round-up: New Williams driver George Russell said he is “proud” of his team’s efforts to get their 2019 F1 on-track in Barcelona.

What they say

Russell admitted he was frustrated watching the other cars go around during his first two-and-a-half days:

It’s been quite annoying watching everybody on track and obviously as a driver you just want to get out there. But it’s passed quite quickly I think because I’ve understood how much work has been going on from all of the people building this car.

It hasn’t made me frustrated because I understand that we haven’t got in this situation on purpose, everybody is upset about it and they’re working their socks off to to make it right. So that was refreshing for me and made me quite proud of the guys and how much they’re working. They’ve been up since yesterday, 2:30 in the morning walk in all through the night to make the car ready and it’s a privilege to be a part of the team.

Quotes: Dieter Rencken

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Comment of the day

Ferrari started the last couple of seasons strongly – are they going to do it again?

I think Bottas has a point. Ferrari are indeed looking very fast, on a single lap (although they always did 10+ laps on their runs) and also on their long runs. Mercedes doesn’t seem to be able to keep up with them at the moment.

Although it’s early days and there will be a lot of developing going on, I can’t believe they (Mercedes) will come to Melbourne with the best package.
Srdjan Mandic (@Srga91)

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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24 comments on “Russell “proud” of Williams crew for pulling all-nighter”

  1. Well George sure looks impressed by something at least

    1. But difficult to be impressed with his barber… ;-)

      1. He looks too young to visit a barbershop.

        I know people look younger the older I’m getting. But Russell looks even years younger than Verstappen did when he started.

        1. Fear not, won’t be long before he gets his My First Beard kit and will then look like everyone else under 30 (except Verstappen).

          1. Take heart …. every year, George Clooney looks more and more like we do.

          2. Except we no longer look like we did when Clooney didn’t look like us… ;-)

  2. Russel: It hasn’t made me frustrated
    Keith: Russell admitted he was frustrated
    Never saw this kind of misleading on Racefans and here it is again.

    1. But the body of his quote makes it clear that he was frustrated, he just got over it quickly. So in reality, I’d say that Russel saying ‘it hasn’t made me frustrated’ is the incorrect part, not the summary by Keith.

    2. I agree it appears ‘misleading’.
      But it is Russell who is quoted as saying “it’s been quite annoying”, which can be paraphrased as ‘being frustrated’.

      Nothing to see here this time.

  3. Russell has done a great job with PR I think so far, very upbeat and positive. If it was Stroll I can’t help but think he’d be moaning about it being unacceptable and dragging the team down/making things worse as he was at the start of the season last year.

    It will be interesting to see if he can keep it up if their performance is as poor as predicted.

    1. But he was so afraid of Natalie Pinkham…

    2. To be fair, the Strolls were contributing a large quantity of cash for the seat – had the car not been ready for them last year in the same way it wasn’t ready this year I think they’d have had every right to complain.

  4. Re: Keith’s tweet on lap time differences…

    Does it seem like the gaps between the compounds are so small that they could barely make a difference in a few situations ? If that’s the case, then wouldn’t the proportion of effect the tyres have on the qualifying time be reduces drastically ?
    For e.g.: lets say, on a certain track in 2018, the Force India on hypers could have set a faster time that RBR on SS, now with what seem to smaller differences in 2019, that would be mean Racing Point on C5s have no chance of topping RBH on C4. Is it so ?

    Disclosure: I have type the above with little knowledge on what the exact differences (avgd out over the year) between the compounds were in 2018.

    1. I believe that is a typo in @Keith Collantine’s tweet, as Pirelli actually stated the difference between C2 and C3 to be at 0.8 seconds.

      1. *0.7, not 0.8. This site really needs an edit button.

  5. @keithcollantine was who I was trying to tag, but it wasn’t coming up using @ followed by Keith.

    1. That @keith guy has one of the busiest inboxes ever.

  6. I already miss the usage of the actual compound names. I find the C1-C5 naming system more confusing than the previous, LOL.

    I share the same views as the COTD although I’m still cautious as always when it comes to testing.

    1. @jerejj I think 1 for hard and 5 for soft is less confusing in the end than supersoft, ultrasoft and hypersoft. However, I don’t understand why both C1 and C2 are coloured white and both C4 and C5 are coloured red. There must be a reason behind it but I fail to understand what it is. Perhaps these similar coloured compounds will never be used in the same GP weekend?

      1. @matthijs These colours are just for testing, there will only be 3 colours of slick at a race weekend, Red (Soft), Yellow (medium) and White (Hard) from memory, no matter which versions of C1-5 tyre are taken to each circuit.

        1. Ah yes of course, thanks for that @asanator

    2. @jerejj – I agree the C1-C5 nomenclature doesn’t give an intrinsic clue as to which is the soft/hard side of the spectrum. It’s a bit like HB pencils in that respect, H1 is softer than H7, but B1 is harder than B7.

      That said, let’s see how it works out on a race weekend. I’m not the kind of superfan who gets into the nitty-gritties of tyres, so I might just be happier with the names Pirelli will be using this season.

  7. I had an all nighter once…lasted three days actually…woke up in a field just south of the chiltern hills

  8. I wonder if it would have been more practical for Williams to run the old car in the first couple of days instead of idling. This could have helped both drivers clock a little more experience that wouldn’t be dramatically different.

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