Smedley: Williams shouldn't be scared of anyone

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Rob Smedley says Williams "should not be scared of anybody" as it chases a podium in today's Russian Grand Prix.

Valtteri Bottas starts from second place alongside Nico Rosberg in Sochi, with Felipe Massa one row further back in fourth. Starting from such a strong position, Smedley - who is Williams head of performance engineering - wants the team to be aggressive against the likes of Mercedes and Ferrari.

"I think it is a good chance for us," Smedley said. "I certainly do not want to make any wild predictions, but we should not be scared of anybody. Mercedes included. When we race on Sunday afternoon, this team should not be scared of anybody.

"If you are scared of other people that it is better that you are not doing something as high stress as Formula One. We will go out there, we will race is hard as we can; we have a reasonable game plan. We have had that since we came here, and that has not really changed, we are just tuning it if you like."

And Smedley says the aim will be to score a podium with at least one car this afternoon having yet to finish in the top three so far this season.

"We definitely want to beat Red Bull because we have a quicker car. We definitely want to get in the mix with Ferrari and try beat them at the end of the race. Mercedes unfortunately they seem a little bit far away at the minute as we saw in qualifying, but we will get in there and try to get at least one of the cars on the podium. That is definitely the target."

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.