George Russell will be a bit disappointed that he is not in the Mercedes Formula 1 car this weekend, but he should head back to Williams with his head held high.
The chances of coming away from the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix with a better showing than he had in the Sakhir race are fairly slim.
So it’s time for Russell to get back to normal business and apply anything that he feels will make the Williams better and just show he is the professional that he is.
I’m pretty sure he will have learned how things are done differently at Mercedes.
Of course, the basic car is faster than the Williams – and the team’s been sceptical about what useful information Russell can bring back from Mercedes with him.
But there are lots of things around the periphery that I am sure can be applied to how the car is run.
Based on the fact that they both use the same power unit, he can bring some information on how Mercedes harvests and deploys the electrical energy, how it optimises the car to be able to ride the kerbs, the compromise of downforce and straightline speed, and the differential settings for corner entry and traction.
Top of the list would be how Mercedes optimises the tyre warm-up and car set-up to reduce the degradation.
I’ll be very interested to see if Williams can make a step forward this weekend just from applying what it can learn from Russell to its package.
But the one thing I would forget about is applying the Mercedes pitstop strategy. We only need one circus in the pitlane!
