Formula 1 must find a "good compromise" over two-day weekends - George Russell

Williams

Formula 1 must find a "good compromise" over two-day weekends - Russell

Russell believes teams need an extra practice session on Friday afternoon in addition to Saturday morning

Ewan Gale

Tuesday 10 November 2020 10:32

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Williams driver George Russell has said Formula 1 must find a "good compromise" over reduced practice sessions after the two-day weekend trial at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix.

Teams ran for just one 90-minute practice session on Saturday morning at Imola, losing two-and-a-half hours of running compared to a normal race weekend.

Russell suggested the single session was not enough for preparation but did indicate the loss of the Friday morning session would be beneficiary to team members as the workload across the season would be reduced.

"I think the session has implications for the teams," he explained.

"We use those normal four hours of testing to understand the cooling levels, the right heights, set-ups, fine-tuning the tyres and how you prepare that, whereas now, you go into the dark. We don't have that preparation so it might mix things up a bit.

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"Personally, I think three sessions with four hours of running is too much, maybe one 90-minute session is slightly too little, so maybe there’s a halfway point with two sessions – one on Friday afternoon, one on Saturday morning would be a good compromise.

"Also, it would allow teams to spend one extra night at home, and when you add that up over 22 races in a season that’s more than three weeks of a year to a month, and that’s massive."

Russell, who is yet to score a point in his F1 career, spurned arguably his best opportunity at Imola when he crashed out of the top 10 behind the safety car.

However, the Briton believes the improvements to the race pace made by the team have shown and says he is confident of moving forward in the near future.

"I think generally this year we’ve had really strong showings on Saturday," he said.

"We’ve really tried biasing our performance towards Sunday because that’s when the points are scored. "That has shown dividends in recent races and has not hurt our qualifying pace, which is an added bonus. I think that’s generally the trend we will be going in moving forward.

"I feel comfortable and confident with the philosophy we’re adopting, and I think that’s important to capitalise on some races moving forward."

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