Missed opportunity for Williams in Belgium

With their aerodynamically slippery car, Williams were expected to be competitive in today’s Belgian Grand Prix. Indeed, Valtteri Bottas’ 3rd place in qualifying suggested they were on for a podium finish. However, Massa and Bottas finished just 6th and 9th respectively.

“My overall main problem was the tyre warm up,” Bottas told Sky Sports F1, “I had quite a lot of wheelspin, and then also the first two laps I just felt slow, felt slippery. The cars around seemed to have a better tyre warm up. Even the pace was not, today, really enough for top three.

“I think we still need a more efficient car, aero wise. We added some downforce for the second sector, but then we’re losing in the first and third sector. We couldn’t really find the compromise, and we just need to be a bit more efficient with that.”

“It was definitely a disappointing race for us,” Massa said, “Starting with the start, that was not good. And then for whatever reason the car was not working with the soft tyres, so we were losing a lot of positions with the soft tyres. Both cars a lot slower than they were supposed to be, and I think maybe that was the biggest problem we had in the race.”

A pit stop error from the team on Bottas’ car where they mixed tyre compounds gave the Finn a drive through penalty.

“I just thought that maybe there was a bit of a mistake with the tyre pressure,” Bottas said, “It wasn’t too bad, but felt a bit strange.

“Obviously disappointing because, looking at the times, we definitely would have lost a realistic 5th place, at least.”

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