Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsWilliams

Bottas concerned by Williams' tyre struggles

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Valtteri Bottas says issues getting the tyres to work properly could hurt Williams more than most in the Monaco Grand Prix.

A number of drivers complained about difficulties getting the front tyres up to temperature during Thursday's practice sessions, with rain preventing any running on the supersoft compound. Bottas says it was an issue which was accentuated on the Williams and left him outside of the top ten in both sessions.

"In the morning I struggled with the temperature of the soft tyres, as I just couldn’t get them into a high enough temperature to make them work, so that was the main issue," Bottas said. "It was a bit better in the afternoon, but we still see that we’re not where we should be. It was a shame we couldn’t try the supersoft tyres because I think we could make them work a bit better."

And Bottas says Williams will need to tailor its running on Saturday morning to try and get more out of the tyres if it wants to be competitive in qualifying.

"I haven’t seen any lap times, it didn’t feel too bad. Obviously this isn’t an easy track in the wet, but the track was improving lap by lap. The main thing we did was to get some more data for the team. Saturday we really need to look at the tyres because we need to get the soft to work as well, then look forward to try the supersoft."

Click here for Thursday's gallery from the Monaco 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.