George Russell says that Max Verstappen is likely to win the Belgian Grand Prix even though he starts 15th.
The leader of the world championship has a grid penalty for excessive engine usage.
Russell thinks thatMax is going to win the race easily.
He and Red Bull are far ahead of everyone.
Sainz said he thought Verstappen could fight for the victory.
"Especially with the pace Max has," Sainz said, "as soon as there is a safety car, or even with the pace he has, he can come back and we have seen him do it before."
Verstappen, who won the last race in Hungary from 10th on the grid, starts one place ahead of Leclerc, who also has an engine penalty and is optimistic of a strong result.
The Dutch driver wants to move forward and be on the podium.
Verstappen was more than half a second ahead of us in every situation over the weekend.
Leclerc needs to beat Verstappen at every race in order to have a chance of catching him in the title race.
It's a lot." Something that they found this weekend is impressive. The gap is large.
We have the race tomorrow, I hope it will change, but before that. On a long run, we appear to be a bit more competitive. Let's see how things go.
The team fitted Leclerc with the wrong tires for his only run in final qualification.
Leclerc asked why he was on the soft tires. He was told to do the lap.
"I mentioned it because I was a bit surprised, but it doesn't change anything for the rest of the weekend."
Leclerc has lost three potential wins as a result of mistaken pit calls this year, including at the last race in Hungary.
Leclerc said it was likely a miscommunication. It was not a big deal.
The plan was to send Leclerc out on used tires, which did not affect the grid position because of his penalty.
It's possible that Ferrari were trying to save a set of soft tyres for the race because of the grip advantage. Gaining places at the start could be the way to go.
Some teams will be surprised by this strategy.
Fernando Alonso said that no one would use the red soft tomorrow because it was too fragile.
It wasn't easy for Mercedes. The seven-time champion was almost two seconds behind the pace.
Hamilton didn't think we'd ever be two seconds off. It is worse than I thought.
Mercedes brought an upgrade to Spa and hoped that it would bring them closer to the front, but instead they had their worst qualification of the year.
It isn't the way it is, because we had upgrades that put us forwards and we were fighting at the front.
I believe it hurts. You have to laugh it off and say that you're not fighting for a title.
I have a responsibility to keep my spirits high if I get too serious. You can't let that affect you. It's not fast and it sucks.
He was reminded that he was starting fourth and had a good chance of continuing his podium streak. We're slow but we have a chance to get a podium.
I don't know if this car wants to win, but I will have a conversation with it tonight and tomorrow.
We are not sure how fast or slow we will be tomorrow. That is the biggest gap we have ever had in a car race, but what we do is talk about where we will be next year. We can use our understanding of the data to make sure next year's car isn't like this one.
Russell blamed tire temperatures for the lack of performance. It has been a problem all season. We don't have the right compromise when it comes to the qualification limit.
We have inherent car limitations. We benefit more on a Sunday than we do on a Saturday. We have only had three or four of the 14 races that have been bad in the qualification rounds. We want to find a solution but we don't have one yet.
After being dropped by Red Bull at the end of 2020 and spending last season as their reserve driver, Alex Albon went to Williams to rebuild his career. Is he doing a great job of it?
The British-born Thai, a close friend of Russell, has produced a series of strong performances and Saturday was the team's best qualification of the year, Albon making it into the final session for the first time. He was promoted to sixth on the grid.
Albon said that the car had been feeling good. To get into Q3 is a different ball game than getting into Q2, but I'm proud of everyone. We maximized the amount of things.
He said that he was aware of the potential of many faster cars coming through from behind him, but was targeting points, and that his performance underscored the performance Williams have been making since a big upgrade was introduced.
Albon said that they were P9 on pace. It's not on luck or misfortune. The fact that we were only a couple of tenths behind the Mercedes shows that we can get into those positions if we work hard.
It is difficult to get that when everything has to be perfect.
The car's weaknesses are known to us. The track hides them more than other circuits. Next week is not going to be the same as this week, but it will still give us motivation and shows we are on the right path.
Improvements are being made and we are learning from the new package. We don't have any more updates this year, so we need to see what else we can do.
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