F1's brutal nature laid bare by Williams's plight

Williams's efforts to hastily build its car were - understandably - overlooked because it missed the first two days of testing. It found out the hard way that anything less than perfection can quickly be exposed as a major weakness in F1

Jonathan Noble Feb 22, 2019, 2:02 PM

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Like time and tide, Formula 1 waits for no one. Williams found this out the hard way earlier this week when delays to the build of its FW42 left it facing a battle to get the car out to Barcelona for the beginning of pre-season testing.

Eventually, after a mammoth effort in the race bays at Grove, a dash to Birmingham airport, a flight to Girona on an Antonov AN-26B that got in at 2.15am, and then a 4am arrival at the circuit, George Russell was finally able to hit the track on Wednesday afternoon.

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Author Jonathan Noble

Jonathan Noble is Motorsport.com’s Formula 1 editor. Having graduated from University of Sussex Jonathan worked for sports news agency Collings Sports reporting on F1, F3, touring cars and other sports, with articles appearing in The Daily Telegraph, The Independent, Reuters, Autosport and other publications. In 1999 he moved to Haymarket Publishing to become a senior editor at Autosport Special Projects, and one year later he became Autosport’s grand prix editor. In 2015 he moved to Motorsport Network, becoming the F1 editor for Motorsport.com. He is also a member of the Guild of Motoring Writers, and sits on the FIA Media Council.

Jonathan has won multiple awards for journalism - in 1991 he was the winner of the Guild of Motoring Writers’ Sir William Lyons’ Award for young journalists, in 2010 he was awarded the Outstanding Individual accolade for consumer journalism in the Haymarket wards, in 2011 he won Haymarket’s Scoop of the Year, and in 2018 he was awarded a prestigious Medaglia d’Oro at the Lorenzo Bandini Awards for his contribution to F1 journalism.