Russell mentioned he lacked confidence within the automobile throughout qualifying, and that induced him to take a cautious strategy and never add further entrance wing for his last run in Q1.
Consequently he had extra understeer that he needed, and after a scrappy lap that noticed him run broad at one level he needed to accept seventeenth on the grid.
Russell harassed that he and his group must get every little thing proper to progress via qualifying, and this time that didn’t occur.
“I feel the primary factor to remove is, as I mentioned on the radio, we will not get it proper each time,” he mentioned. “I really feel like we have most likely carried out excellently each single Saturday to this point this 12 months.
“As we speak we did only a positive job, however positive will not be sufficient, and you will get eradicated by doing a positive job. So that is the place we’re in.
“And I simply did not have the arrogance right this moment to assault the automobile. I used to be all the time on the again foot. And undoubtedly loads to look into. As a result of forward of this 12 months, I might have mentioned this was our greatest alternative for factors. But it is the primary time we’re out in Q1.”
Russell admitted that the essential wing set-up selection had proved expensive.
“Normally you’ll be able to afford to place extra extra entrance wing flap within the automobile because the session progresses. I did not have the arrogance after the primary run.
“So I made a decision to not, after which I had loads of understeer. So I feel that is the important thing, is that you just want confidence to have the ability to push the automobile. And right this moment the automobile was driving me, I wasn’t driving the automobile, and that set me again loads.”
Requested by Autosport to develop on why he hadn’t made the change he mentioned: “I did not have the arrogance to try this. Normally come qualifying every little thing takes a step up, I construct confidence, and we appear to have the ability to nail it when when it issues.
George Russell, Williams FW43B
Photograph by: Motorsport Images
“However as quickly as I did Flip 1 I knew I would not have the ability to try this. I simply did not have a great feeling with the automobile.”
Russell famous that the sturdy wind degree, which has affected the automobile’s type this 12 months, was additionally an element and “didn’t favour the traits” of the FW43B.
Williams head of car efficiency Dave Robson additionally added that the “Malaysia” ranges of warmth additionally induced the group hassle because the tyres reacted to the temperatures in an sudden method.
“We had thought it might keep on the cool facet this afternoon. But it surely didn’t; the clouds clearly broke and it was simply as scorching this afternoon in qualifying because it had been yesterday.
“The reported monitor temperatures are extremely excessive – it’s much like the way it was the final couple of years in Malaysia after they’d resurfaced it. In order that does make it powerful.
“Clearly, that’s the identical for everybody – so we will’t use that as any sort of excuse. I feel the tyres did behave in these situations not fairly as we’d anticipated.
“There was much more understeer, so the entrance tyres appeared to be affected greater than we had anticipated. Usually, you come right here and it’s very popular, and it turns into rear restricted fairly shortly. That didn’t appear to be the case.
“However, to be truthful from what I may collect from what different drivers had been saying on the radio yesterday, most groups discovered the identical.”