Jack Aitken says he is raring to get another opportunity to impress Williꦇams 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 unexpec🍎ted 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 t🧸o find out whether Hamilton has recovered from coronavirus and is able to participate this week🐠end, which would result in a late reshuffling 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 final d🐼ecision 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 just approaching it like a normal weekend,” Aitken told mahbx.com. “If a🌞nything if it’s a little bit easier because I’ve got the experience of last weekend behind me.

“I’m just going to prepare as I wꦯould if I was racing, there’s no downside to doing that and it’s obviously the safe option.

“If I get told tomorrow I’m not in the car tꩲhen that’s just one of those things and I would have been glad to have 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 Wi📖lliams ahead of the season and take on the position of reserve driver.

The 25-year-ol▨d insisted he felt ready for his debut F1 weekend having been preparing himself for the possibility of that scenario occurring since the start of the year.

“I’d been waiting pretty much🐼 all year for that sort of ch💞ance to come along,” Aitken explained.

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

“It was good that I got a taste of the car earl🎀ier 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 quite ne𓂃w to me.

“There are a few quirks with the car as well, F1 cars 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 tꦡime 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.

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

Aitken came wit♛hin 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 fe🐼lt his performance across the weekend had impressed Williams.

“They are🃏 happy that I was able to come in and there൩ 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 in 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 compeꦐtitive ahead of an Alfa and a Haas and to be that close to Nicholas after he’s done the whole season, I was pretty happy and the engineers I worked with were too.”