Williams Racing finished the free practice on the first day of the 2023 F1 Bahrain GP with Alexander Albon 17th and rookie Logan Sargent 20th. Williams Racing were last in the Constructors’ Championship last year, but Alexander Albon says he feels positioned to take on AlphaTauri and Haas following the first session.
“FP2 was much better than FP1. We still have some work to do, but we are one step closer,” said Albon. “Looking at the AlphaTauri and Haas cars, I think they’re close on race pace and they’re the ones we’re fighting. “We’ll see if there’s a lot of degu here, so race pace is a little more important than qualifying pace. The ease of overtaking is pretty high, so fast cars tend to pass. Because of qualifying. I have my car set up for 2020, but I’m 1.5 times more focused on the race!” “Race 1 is an unknown world. “There are some teams that are very complete.” “Realistically, we don’t have the fastest car on the grid, but we may be able to do a better job than others and move up the order.” Logan Sargent commented: “It was nice to experience a full day. As expected, the car ran really well once the temperature dropped.” “We were surprised by how much grip we had at night, but we need to use it a bit better. Tomorrow in FP3, it will be hot during the day, so today was the best decision for tomorrow’s qualifying. “We’re going to do some more analysis tonight and figure out what we’re aiming for in qualifying. All in all, it was a good first full day in the office,” said Dave, head of vehicle performance at Williams Racing. “Friday in Bahrain we had two free practice sessions as usual. The drivers seemed more satisfied with the car in the cooler conditions of FP2,” explained Robson. “Tonight we have a full program. I was able to run the 2019 and got a good sense of how the car would perform in both qualifying and race conditions. We can improve the car one step further, but we have to be careful not to mess with the hot conditions in FP3.”Two drivers did a good job today. In particular, Logan experienced a big change in the performance of the car for the first time in the evening session.It was a valuable lesson and we will be in a strong position tomorrow.” So we want to secure our position on Sunday so that we can race as many cars as possible.”
