‘Draggy’ Williams can’t make the most of Mercedes power unit advantage

Williams’ George Russell isn’t expecting a particularly strong showing from the team in Belgium next weekend, despite it being a power sensitive circuit, where the Mercedes power unit is expected to dominate.

It’s widely known that Mercedes holds a key power advantage over its rivals and is therefore expected to excel at circuits which reward power, such as Spa and Monza.

But Russell says despite Williams running the same engine as Mercedes and Racing Point, it is unable to put that advantage to good use because the FW43 is so “draggy”.

“No, actually. No,” he replied when asked if he expected Williams to have an advantage over its nearest rivals at Spa-Francorchamps next weekend.

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“Even though we have the strongest engine in the back we are by far the ‘draggiest’ car on the grid.

“That is why you’ve seen us go really strong in Budapest the last two years because it is not a power sensitive circuit as such and even though we have a lot of power we’re not really utilising it because we have so much drag on the car.

“So compared to the Racing Point and the Mercedes we are a huge amount of speed down on them, purely because the car is so draggy. Even though on paper you think ‘well, we have a Mercedes, we should be flying in Spa and Monza’ it’s not the case because unfortunately aerodynamically we have really poor efficiency in the car and that will actually make it really tough for us.”

Russell has however managed to escape Q1 on four occasions this year, which is four more than he achieved in 2019, proving that Williams has at least taken a step forward in 2020.