Report: A tricky Friday for Williams in Baku

It was a day of two halves for both Williams Racing drivers, as each enjoyed one trouble-free Free Practice session and one where their running was cut short on a sunny Friday in Baku.

At the third-longest track on the calendar, Alex Albon and Nicholas Latifi completed 35 and 33 laps respectively, to set times good enough for P17 & P19 in FP1 and P18 & P20 in FP2.

Albono improved his FP1 time to set a 1:46.397 in the day’s second session under the low Azerbaijani sun before the slightest contact with the wall at Turn 17 ended his day prematurely.

“Today’s gone ok,” summarised Alex, before saying: “It’s been a bit tricky for us as the car felt good. It felt like one of the better cars that we’ve had so far this year.

“To be where we are on pace is a little bit confusing, so we need to try and understand what’s going on. We’ve got a bit of work to do on that side.

“We’ll go to the drawing board tonight and see what we can come up with.”

Nicky was out on track for a mammoth 26 laps in FP2 – the second-highest lap tally of any driver in either session – and took some 3.7s off his FP1 time with the extra running to set a best lap of 1:47.218.

The Canadian is looking to build confidence after losing laps in the day’s first session: “Not an ideal day of practice as we missed most of FP1 through an electrical issue.

“In general, with street tracks, you don’t want to miss any running especially on this track with how much confidence you must get into your braking points.

“There’s still a lot of lap time to come from me once I get that confidence from chipping away at it. We’ll do our homework tonight to get a better understanding of the direction to go with the car.

“There’s a bit of catching up to do but we’re going to maximise every moment to prepare us for qualifying.”

Dave Robson, Head of Vehicle Performance, explained why Nicky’s FP1 ended earlier than intended: “We’ve had a tricky day with an electronics problem on Nicholas’s car stopping his session early in FP1.”

He also detailed why Car 23 didn’t complete the day’s running by saying: “A small brush with the wall by Alex in FP2 prevented him from completing the afternoon session.

“However, we have been able to complete a lot of what we had planned, and we have identified some areas to work on tonight.

“The car is working reasonably well at this circuit, but we need to find something else to improve the lap time, and that will be our focus in FP3.”

Some of the Williams Driver Academy were also out in action today, with Logan Sargeant grabbing P7 in Formula 2 Qualifying and Roy Nissany taking P14. Meanwhile, in Cheshire, Ollie Gray took P5 at Oulton Park in Britsh Formula 4 after being the quickest driver on track in FP1.