Jack Aitken says he is raring to get another opportunity ༺to impress Williams at this weekend’s Formula 1 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, but he remains in the 🍸dark about whether he will race or not.

Aitken was handed an unexpected F1 debut with Williams at the Sakhir Grand Prix, replacing team regular George Russell, who was promoted to Mercedes as♏ stand-in for Lewis Hamilton after the seven-time world champion tested positive🍷 for COVID-19.

Mercedes is waiting to find out whether Hamilꦑton has recovered from coronavirus and is able to participate this weekend, which would result in a late reshuffli🐻ng of seats with Russell returning to his usual place at Williams.

That leaves Aitken, who conducted media duties for Williams in the pre-race press conference in Abu Dhabi, facing an anxious wait to find out whether he will get a second🎐 chance to contest a grand prix weekend.

A ꦜfinal decision could come as late as Friday, but 🗹Aitken said he is approaching the weekend as if he were racing as normal to ensure he is ready if needed.

“I’m jus🐷t approaching it like a normal weekend,” Aitken told ltxcn.top. “If anything if it’s a little bit easier because I’vꦰe got the experience of last weekend behind me.

“I’m just goi🉐ng to prepare as I would if I was racing, there’s n🤪o downside to doing that and it’s obviously the safe option.

“If I get told tomorrow I’m not in the car then that’s just one of those things and I would have been glad to ha𒅌ve made the most of my opportunity last weekend, but I am pretty desperate to have another go.”

Aitken left the Renault junior programme to join Williams ahead of the season and take on🍸 the position of reserve driver.

The 25-year-old insisted he felt ready for his debut F1 weekend having been preparing himself for the p🉐os🀅sibility of that scenario occurring since the start of the year.

“I’d been wꦿaiting pretty much all year for that s𒉰ort of chance to come along,” Aitken explained.

“You’ve been preparing for a long time 🀅so I think that’s why it helped getting up to speed quickly.

“It was good that I got a taste of the car earlier in the year, but there was also a lot of things I hadn’t done that form part of an F1 race weekend. Saturday with the qualifying procedures and Sunday as well, were quiteꦗ new to me.

“There are a few qཧuirks with the car as well, F1 ca🐷rs are so complex these days and there are a lot of systems working in the background which ultimately help you out a lot of the time but it does mean that some of the things that traditionally as a driver you might take for granted, they just don’t work the same way.

“Understanding those quirks compared to the F2 car and getting up to 🎐speed in time for qualifying and the race was quite a challenge. Luckily, it went pretty well and I think the pace that we found from Friday to Saturday was a very decent step and after a bit of time to digest, I’m pretty happy with the weekend.

“Coming into this weekend I already have a lot more confidence in knowing how to utilꦗise the tools and manipulate the car to get what I want,” he added.

Aitken came within a tenth of a second of out-qualifying teammate Nicholas Latifi in qualifying and finished 16th in the race, beating fellow F1 debutant Pietro Fittipaldi despite suffering a late spin. He felt his performance across the weekend had impres🍰sed Williams.

“The👍y are happy that I was able🔥 to come in and there wasn’t too much of a learning process,” Aitken said.

“It wasn’t like we got to Sunday and were still trying to find half a second or whatever. For them I filled the role of reserve pretty well, I think and stepped i🐽n with minimal fuss and got on with the job.

“Pace-wise in qualifying was really decent, I just messed up the last run a little bit but was very competitive ahead of an Alfa and a Haas and to be that close to Nicholas after he’s done the whole season, I was𝔉 pretty happy and the engineers I worked with were too.”