Valtteri Bottas is concerned by the excessive tyre wear shown on Williams’ long runs during Friday practice for the German Grand Prix.
Bottas and teammate Felipe Massa languished down the timesheets in second practice, in 13th and 15th respectively.
Not only was the qualifying pace poor, high tyre degradation meant Williams’ long runs were uncompetitive as thus far this weekend, they are behind Force India, McLaren and Toro Rosso.
Bottas is confident however that Williams can find a solution overnight ahead of Saturday’s qualifying session and the race on Sunday – where tyres will play a key role.
“For me, this was a pretty standard Friday and we were more or less where we should be, but the problem in the long runs was that, with both of the tyre compounds, there was big tyre wear,” Bottas confirmed.
“There was no graining or anything like that, the surface of the tyres was going away pretty quickly. Of course from today to tomorrow, we can improve quite a bit, as we tend to do.
“It’s looking pretty tight behind the top three teams but I’m confident we’ll better than in Budapest, for sure. There we were eight or seventh only and I think we could be better than that here. I think over one lap our pace puts us more or less where we should be.”
Bottas’ best finish at the Hockenheimring came in 2014, finishing 2nd ahead of Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton.
