Last season the Imola GP took place over two days, Saturday and Sunday, in November, while this season the teams had more time to fix the car set-up, they found better weather conditions: more grip and therefore better performance.

The team that has undergone the least these changes on the Italian circuit is Williams, which has even improved its time by a few hundredths compared to last year, qualifying with Russell and Latifi in 12th and 14th position for tomorrow's race.

SO CLOSE TO Q3!

A great effort by both drivers nevertheless 👏

It’s P12 for @GeorgeRussell63, P14 for @NicholasLatifi. pic.twitter.com/GIm5mvAAX2

— Williams Racing (@WilliamsRacing) April 17, 2021

During an interview with Motorlat and other selected media, Dave Robson, Williams' Vehicle Performance Engineer expressed his thoughts on Latifi's performance among other things:

"I think he [Latifi] was genuinely surprised yesterday 'cause he just came out of the blocks flying, he felt alright from the start" he said.

"There was something that might have disturbed George yesterday, but today he did a very good lap."

There was a reasonable level of confidence the car would be better in Imola than it was in Bahrain, because of the conitions of the track, and the performance of the car seemed more even than last year, when it behaved well in the first sector but not as well during the rest of the lap.

"There wasn't a huge change in the way we set it up, if I'm honest we were a little bit slower in sector one than we were expecting, but yeah we have a better balance, we managed to solve some of the issues we had, we really struggled with braking last year and it's a lot better this year which is good," Robson stated.

"I think the car is in better shape, it is genuinely behaving well, the drivers were pretty happy since the first run yesterday in FP1 because the car is balanced in the straights and most of the corners."

"Last year we went quite slow, this year it responds quite well mechanically and the aerodynamic is good as well."

Then he referred to Russell who suggested to use the mediums again at the end of Q2, but Robson said the team preferred to store up a set of new medium tires for the race:

"We wanted to save a set for the race, we were pretty confidet watching everyone else's lap times during that frst run in Q2. The track was of course improving and even if George felt the car was better, but we were very confident it was primarily the track ripping up, we knew we couldn't have gone quicker."

Robson also clarified how the team managed to work with yesterday's technical problems:

"It was awkward, it was an interesting reminder for us of how much we rely on those systems and how much information we thake from them, so it definitely made things much more difficult. Fortunately the GPS was still working so we knew where were our cars and everyone else's cars, but it was odd even if we adapted pretty well and very quickly but it was trickier than normal, especially when you are trying to work out what the other teams are doing. It was eye opening."

Latifi can be satisfied with the result, after two days in which, despite the accident, he has shown that he has improved a lot compared to last season:

"Nicholas has been extremely good right from the moment he rolled out the garage in P1, in terms of both the pace and his attitude he's been particularly good, he was calm, focused and he was just really enjoying driving the car," he concluded.