Since the Williams team’s Bahrain struggles were laid bare during pre-season testing, with drivers George Russell blaming the gusty conditions creating the “worst-case scenario conditions”, the switch to Imola for this weekend’s Emilia Romagna Grand Prix has been looked forward to.
Russell has talked up hopes for Imola several times in recent weeks, hoping that the calmer conditions in a more sheltered location will allow Williams to be more competitive. In the Bahrain season opener, Russell did reach Q2 and qualify 15th, but the Williams was only the ninth-fastest car overall.
The 23-year-old has predicted a “yo-yo” season for Williams in terms of performance. And with Imola likely to offer conditions that are far better suited to Williams, this weekend could be one of the better weekends.
“It’s very different to Bahrain,” said Russell when asked by The Race about expectations for the Emilia Romagna GP weekend. “You’re at two ends of the spectrum – Bahrain’s got a lot of slow-speed corners and it’s very exposed, generally very windy.
“Imola is higher-speed corners, the angle of those corners are more 90-degrees as opposed to the 180-degree corners we see [in Bahrain]. And it’s very enclosed with all the trees and buildings around, so we’re going between extremes.
“I’m not necessarily saying Imola is in the top end [for Williams], but it’s in the top half, let’s say. “
Russell heads back to Imola with mixed memories from last year, having climbed to ninth place before crashing under the safety car in what he called an “amateur” mistake.
Team-mate Nicholas Latifi matched his best F1 result with 11th last year, and expects to get a more clear read of the competitiveness of the Williams FW43B there this weekend.
“Imola’s one of the circuits that just seemed to suit our car last year,” said Latifi.
“We’re going to a track that hopefully has more stable conditions. I’m curious to see how we perform and get a truer read on where we’ll be for the rest of the year.”
Imola was one of Williams’s strongest circuits last season, with Russell qualifying 13th and setting a time 2.329% off pole position. That was the fourth-strongest performance of the season for Williams in terms of relative pace, bettered only by Spa (2.189%), Bahrain (2.326%) and Portugal (1.729%).
But its pace over the first sector, which runs from the start/finish line to midway between the Villeneuve Chicane and Tosa, was remarkable. In qualifying, Russell was seventh-fastest, 0.380s slower than fastest qualifier Valtteri Bottas – making it the fifth-quickest car through this part of the track.
Although the car was less competitive later in the lap, particularly in the final sector, it excelled in the high-speed chicanes. If that characteristic can carry over, then Williams might hope to take the fight to eight-fastest Alfa Romeo, which Russell suggests looked stronger in Bahrain because the C31 deals with windy conditions well.
While Williams is working hard to ameliorate the wind-sensitivity, which is a consequence of a push to gain downforce, the car won’t be transformed this weekend. But if the conditions are as hoped then it will at least be a better-case scenario than Bahrain was.
“It probably will take longer than the three-week break that we’ve got,” said Williams head of vehicle performance Dave Robson of the team’s problems in Bahrain. “But not having another couple of races in that gap is helpful.
“It would be nice to get ahead of it and start to get on top of it before we have to run the car again. The fewer races we have to do before we get on top of it, the better. That will be the way we get back into the midfield, by fixing or improving that.”
The team has confirmed it will be trialling some test items aimed at improving the car characteristics and adapting the FW43B to Imola, as well as tweaks designed to avoid a repeat of the boost leak that caused worsening problems for Latifi from the start of the race in Bahrain.
Williams won’t be adding to its tally of eight F1 victories at Imola, with the most recent coming courtesy of Ralf Schumacher in 2001. But if the car performs as well as hoped, it can at least aspire to get a car into Q2 again and perhaps even grab a points finish if others hit trouble.
