Valtteri Bottas could only finish ninth at Spa-Francorchamps on Sunday after an error by his Williams Martini Racing team during his first pit stop cost him the chance of a good result.
Bottas saw the chequered flag down in ninth despite running inside the top four in the early stages, but found his race compromised by the error in the pits by his team, who fitted three soft Pirelli tyres with one medium tyre, meaning the Finn was forced to serve a drive-through penalty.
“We haven’t got the result we were after today,” said Bottas. “The pit stop and the race pace are two areas that we need to investigate.
“We thought we would be stronger during the race but the soft tyre in the first stint didn’t work as well and put us in a difficult position.
“We have to make sure we bounce back well in Monza.”
Talking of the tyre incident, Bottas felt it cost him the chance to fight for at least fifth position at Spa, but felt the pace of the car was not as strong as he hoped it would have been on Sunday.
“It’s very disappointing, I’ve never heard of anything like this happening,” said Bottas to Autosport.
“But what can you do? For sure that cost us a lot, looking at the times in the end without that penalty we might have been fifth or something as I was at the front of that pack.
“But our pace was not enough to be top three, which was our aim, so it was not our day.”
