Sergey Sirotkin believes it is “more than logical” for him to extend his stay with Williams into 2019, in order to see the end of its recovery project.
Sirotkin linked up with Williams for 2018 but his graduation to Formula 1 coincided with the team’s regression through the order, as it initially struggled to understand its recalcitrant FW41.
Williams has spent a large part of the season getting to grips with its weaknesses and has remained at the rear of the field, scoring just seven points.
Williams is one of only two teams on the grid yet to confirm either of its drivers for 2019 – though the other, Force India, is all-but-set – and Sirotkin is hopeful of staying.
“I think it’s how we are with the team, one united group, we recovered from where we found ourselves after Bahrain, I think we can be quite proud of that,” he said.
“It seems more than logical to finish what we started to do and see the end of the… to see actually the pure results of the work we did so far together.
“Many times I spend, honestly too much time, you know, trying to get the things sorted, which obviously were much more long-term than short-term thinking.
“So I mean again I just see it much more than logical to get to the end together and see the results of the work we did together.”
Sirotkin emphasised that Williams has made substantial progress through 2018, having had to play catch-up compared to its rivals, on account of its early struggles.
“If you put our car now in Melbourne I’d say you’d see it in Q3,” he said.
“I mean the only thing is the other people are progressing as quick as we did, obviously the issues we found after Bahrain were quite fundamental, issues coming from the very bottom of all the process building the car.
“It took us a lot longer than all of our opponents to first understand what makes those issues and then find a way to solve the basics right.
“And only afterwards [we were] able to improve the car, working from the right basics, so it takes a much longer process than thinking about just producing a better part on its own.
“I think with the effort we made to recover from where we’ve been, even if we didn’t exactly achieve what we wanted, we can be proud of the work and the effort we did.”
