Russell sees drop-off for Williams: 'Need to have a little think'

"We came back out, when we put the new tyres on, and they didn't really seem to switch on either, because the tread's so much more and then the dry parts of the track, they weren't suitable either," said Russell, who acknowledged there is still room for improvement in this area at Williams.

The driver currently 15th in the world championship continued: "We normally excel when it's either wetter conditions or slicks in damp conditions. So this intermediate phase we need to have a bit of a think about. As I said, it's been twice now we've been in these conditions, and we've struggled both times."

On Saturday, Russell made a mistake that caused him to miss out on Q3 and the chance for a better starting position. "It potentially could have been different, but generally the overall pace wasn't really there. We struggled last year in these conditions. It's not wet, it's not dry, you're sort of in no man's land. Turn 8 is the difficult one because it was relatively dry, how hard do you push? I was trying to vary a load of different things, and to be honest, nothing really seemed to work. So a difficult afternoon," he concluded.