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Williams' struggles surprise Bottas

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Valtteri Bottas admits he is surprised how much Williams has struggled in Monaco after dropping out in Q1.

While Williams has not been competitive at any point during the Monaco Grand Prix weekend, Bottas dropped out in the first part of qualifying while team-mate Felipe Massa advanced. Bottas says he was actually happy with his driving but unable to extract any grip from the Pirelli tyres.

"A tough day for all of the team," Bottas said. "We knew this wouldn’t be the best track for us but we didn’t expect it to be this difficult. We have tried plenty of things with the tyres this weekend and still we are struggling.

"We are struggling to put enough energy into the surface of the tyre and create enough tyre surface temperatures. I had traffic in Q1 in the first couple of laps, which meant the temperatures dropped too low. I had one timed lap and I thought the lap was good compared with the grip I had available, but it was just slow."

However, Bottas says he is confident the problem is just specific to Monaco and isn't concerned Williams will suffer a repeat this season.

"It has not been an easy weekend and for sure tomorrow won’t be easy starting where we are. This is Monaco and anything can happen, so we are not giving up on points.

"I am not worried for the rest of the season. We didn’t bring any updates here and we have updates coming for the next two races, so hopefully this is a one off and tomorrow will be important to minimise the damage we are doing in the points. Any points we can get tomorrow is good."

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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.