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Bottas: Williams will learn lessons from Silverstone
Valtteri Bottas thinks Williams can learn important lessons from the British Grand Prix - which will help it deliver better Formula 1 results in the future.
Jonathan Noble
Edited: Jul 8, 2015, 8:16 AM
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The Finn and his teammate Felipe Massa headed the field in the early stages of the Silverstone race, but failed to capitalise before slipping back in wet conditions to finish fourth and fifth.
After some controversy about Williams calling off the fight between them early on, and claims afterwards that the outfit could have been more ruthless in using one of its men to slow rivals Mercedes, its strategy calls have been under the spotlight.
Team review
Bottas is convinced that Williams has to look carefully at what happened to ensure that if it finds itself in a repeat scenario in future it does better.
"I think we still need to have a better look at how we could have got the best outcome," explained Bottas after running through events in the post-race debrief.
"I don't want to say any more. I think there could have been something we could have done better."
Team 'afraid' to make wrong call
Teammate Massa understands how tough things were for Williams when faced with a 1-2 in the early stages of the race, but thinks how it handled the early stages was correct.
"I understand the team gets sometimes a bit afraid because we know the result is the most important thing," he said about the early phase of the race.
"But it was difficult for Valtteri for pass me and it was difficult for Mercedes to pass him as well. So nothing changed. Everything we did [there] didn't cost any positions."
Pit stop timing
The bigger issue for Williams was the timing of both stops – having been undercut by Lewis Hamilton at the first stop and pitting too late for intermediates late on.
Bottas knows that with hindsight it is easy to be critical, which is why he is eager that lessons are learned.
"It is all easy to say afterwards," he said about the first stop. "We were worried how many laps we can do with the prime tyre, and if we stop early we can lose many positions. With the rain it didn't matter any more.
"Then when it started to rain we stopped one lap too late. The rain really hit us when we were just around at the pit entry area and the corner after.
"Then Vettel behind could react. We were struggling and he could pit and we were also unlucky.
"Things didn't go our way. We would have preferred a dry race and there would have been possibility for much more points, but what was good was we had really strong pace. We were fighting even for the win."
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