Valtteri Bottas was left ruing poor pace from Williams at the inaugural race in Baku as the Finn finished in sixth place.
Heading into the race weekend, the Williams team were optimistic of a strong result with the long straights likely to favour their Mercedes-powered car. Friday practice demonstrated the team were right to be hopeful with Bottas finishing in fourth behind the Mercedes drivers and only a couple of tenths of a second adrift of Sergio Perez. An incident with a cable duct cover hindered Bottas in final practice whilst Felipe Massa continued to struggle in comparison to his teammate.
Moreover, Williams were caught out in qualifying as twice Bottas caught Max Verstappen at the start of his flying laps leaving the Finn a lowly eighth on the grid and even behind Massa who lined up fifth.
Into the race itself and both Williams drivers struggled for pace on both the soft and supersoft tyre compounds. The team opted to put Massa on a two-stop strategy whilst Bottas managed to complete a one-stop strategy, however, even their straight line speed failed to put them in contention for a podium as they finished the race in tenth and sixth respectively.
“Not good enough, of course. The predicted pace we should have had wasn’t quite there, you know, we were just missing pace today. We just need to make a better car now and better pace [as we were missing] grip in the corners.”
Rob Smedley, Head of Performance at Williams, confirmed the problems the team encountered in Azerbaijan.
“Felipe was struggling with rear graining on the qualifying tyre and then Valtteri had a little bit of the same thing to a lesser extent in the first stint. Valtteri made the one-stop work which obviously got into that sixth position from running ninth in the first stint [but] we need to find a bit more car pace.”
The paddock now head to Austria for round nine of the season and which has previously been a strong track for Williams including a pole position for Massa back in 2014. The team will be hoping the car show an improved performance and allow the drivers to battle with Ferrari and Red Bull.
