Formula 1

More Work Needed At Williams After Disappointing Barcelona Outing

1 Mins read
Both of the teams drivers battled to disappointing finishes (Photo Credit: Octane Photographic Ltd)

A year after securing victory at the Spanish Grand Prix, the Williams F1 team are still yet to score a point in the 2013 season.

Both 2012 winner, Pastor Maldonado, and Finnish rookie Valtteri Bottas have struggled for pace at Barcelona this weekend, and could only manage fourteenth and sixteenth places respectively.

Maldonado was hit with a penalty early in the race for speeding in the pit lane.

“The pace was unfortunately not in the car today. We made one more pit stop than we hoped to because I was given a drive-through penalty for speeding in the pitlane but overall we did the best we could. We now need to regroup, work hard and prepare for Monaco,” he said.

Meanwhile, Bottas was pleased to be able to make only three pit stops compared to his team mate’s four.

“I couldn’t feel the grip in the car and we were sliding a lot from the start which meant we were hard on the tyres. We made a three-stop strategy work but in the end, Pastor switched to a four-stop race and that seemed to be better. We’re not where we want to be, so there is still a lot of work to do,” he said.

“We knew it would be a difficult race today but we can draw a slight positive from the three places Pastor gained from his grid position. We were suffering with high tyre degradation and so made the decision to switch Pastor onto a four-stop strategy. We committed to a three-stop with Valtteri, but we then lost a lot of time,” Mike Coughlan, the team’s technical director, added.

“We need to check the data as the degradation on his car was unusual compared to the pace we had on Friday. Everyone at Williams knows what needs to be done to turn things around and we need to keep working hard. We’d also like to thank all our fans and partners for their continued support.”

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