Missed opportunities at Williams

It wasn’t expected that they would do well in Hungary following the poor result in Monaco, but Williams could have been at the front of the field again this weekend had they not of had a few problems, some of their own doing and some not.

“We weren’t where we expected to be today following the pace we had on Friday,” said Rob Smedley, head of Vehicle Perforamce. “It was an eventful race all round. Valtteri was unfortunately hit from behind through no fault of his own picking up a puncture, and without that could have been on the podium.”

“Felipe’s tyres only worked in the final stint, and we need to investigate why that was as it made for a tough race for him.

“Results like this make us stronger as a group and we can go away and analyse what went wrong. Williams has been on a constant learning curve over the last 18 months and you have to take days like this with that.

“We now head into the next few races which will play to our strengths and we’ll aim to recuperate the points we lost today.”

Felipe Massa had a difficult start, which meant that the field had to go around again for another formation lap from an aborted start which was started by him. It was then a battle to get through the field, but he wasn’t able to get the tyres to work.

“That was a really challenging day for us. I got a penalty early on and then the medium tyre in traffic didn’t work well for me at all, it was uphill from there on. As a team we walked away with no points, which is a blow for the championship, but something we now have to make up for.”

Valtteri Bottas could have been on for a podium had he not had the puncture from Max Verstappen, “It was a disappointing day to score no points. At the start of the race we were running in line with the pace of the car. There were plenty of opportunities to score well, but I suffered a puncture at the wrong time and from then on it was a struggle. It is important we move forward from this, have a good rest and arrive fresh and ready for Spa.”

#f #hungary