Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsWilliams

Bottas: Williams has pace over Red Bull, Toro Rosso

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Valtteri Bottas says Williams has enough pace "in the back pocket" to beat both Red Bull and Toro Rosso in the Spanish Grand Prix.

Toro Rosso looked strong throughout both free practice sessions on Friday, while Red Bull was hit by reliability issues but Daniil Kvyat still featured comfortably inside the top ten in both sessions. With Williams close behind, when asked if it was set to be in a fight with both those teams, Bottas said there is more to come from his car.

"Maybe [close] in this session, but this is only Friday practice and teams are running different fuel loads in the long runs and different engine modes," Bottas said. "We know what we have in the back pocket and I think it should be enough for Toro Rosso and hopefully Red Bull as well."

Having sat out FP1 to allow Susie Wolff to drive his car, Bottas says it was important for him to get plenty of running in the afternoon.

"You need to have nice and clean sessions. I am happy we had a good P2, plenty of laps, which was the target and good data from the tyres. Still getting into it, I think there is a bit more from the car and from me for tomorrow."

Click here for Friday's gallery from the Spanish Grand Prix

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.