Russel has low expectations in Williams F1 car on the upcoming races in Spa-Francorchamps and Autodromo Monza by claiming it was the draggiest car on the grid.
The next two races place high demand on power unit performance a factor that should be paying up from the strength of Williams’ Mercedes engine, but the team has been dropping off on races leaving it at the bottom of the championship without even a single point to its name.
The williams racer is actually braced for a even more struggle with the FW43 car which is ‘draggy’ and it will make it difficult to overcome the high speed tracks.
“Even though we have a lot of power, we’re not really utilising it because we have so much drag on the car.” said Russel.
“So even though on paper you think well, we have a Mercedes, we should be flying in Spa-Francorchamps and Monza, it’s not the case because unfortunately aerodynamically we have a really poor efficiency in the car. That will actually make it pretty tough for us.”
The Williams racer also confirmed the main reason behind their strength in Budapest for the last two years was, well, because it is not a power sensitive circuit as such.
The British racing driver also claimed that though they have a lot of power on their FW43 car, they were not really utilising it because of the huge drag on the car so it has a very poor aerodynamic efficiency.
Dave Robson who is the head of vehicle performance at Williams spoke about the challenges at the Spa-Francorchamps saying that trading downforce and drag to balance performance across the three elements made a key contribution to the success of the car. The S1 and S2 rewarding low drag but S2 containing a series of demanding corners that need high downforce.
“Teams will try different compromises and will watch what their competitors are doing before settling on a solution.” Dave Robson also added.
