5 Things We Learned From F1 Testing Week 1

#5 - Williams Look Worryingly Slow

George Russell was the first driver to pilot the FW42 in anger.

2018 was a year to forget for Williams, but 2019 has got off to a very poor start for the team from Grove. Their lack of running is also a huge issue, the FW42 seeing no track time on Monday nor Tuesday, before finally getting out of the garage on Wednesday afternoon.

The British outfit are effectively two-and-a-half days behind their competition, ground that they've done a poor job of catching up. In the first two days alone, Ferrari rounded the Circuit de Catalunya 326 times, a distance of over 1,500 kilometres, or around the same length from London to Budapest. With over a quarter of their available testing time wasted, 23 laps from George Russell on Wednesday and a combined 65 tours on Thursday is very worrying.

Perhaps most concerning, though, is their lack of pace. While testing lap times are notoriously unreliable, the lap charts don't make for good reading. On Wednesday, Russell was clocking 1 minute 25's, while everyone else was consistently 5 seconds a lap faster. Thursday was better, but Robert Kubica and Russell were the slowest of all and over 1.5 seconds slower than anyone else.

Williams will need a much better second week if they're to raise morale and show that they can compete in Australia.

What do you think has been the most important thing we've learned during the first week of F1 testing? Let us know in the comments below!