Valtteri Bottas explains he could not push as much as he wanted during the second half of the Austrian Grand Prix because the front right brake started overheating on his Williams FW37.
Lining up sixth on the grid, the Finn’s opening stint saw him drop a position after Toro Rosso's Max Verstappen overtook him just before the Safety Car came out on the opening lap.
“I lost the place at the exit of Turn 2 with the traction,” said Bottas. “That made it a little bit tricky. It took quite a while to get through Verstappen and Hulkenberg and then the pit stop was a bit slow so we lost a place to Hulkenberg again and I was stuck behind him.
“And then we started to have problems with the brakes – the front right one was overheating. I got through Hulkenberg again but the rest of the race was managing the brakes.
“I could not really brake that late and hard. I had to go a lot backwards with the brake bias. It was just a case of bringing the car home really, because that also led tyre temperatures to drop a bit too much out of the range.”
With team-mate Felipe Massa securing Williams’ second consecutive podium, Bottas’ eventual fifth place finish at Spielberg enables the Grove-based outfit to gain 13 points on second-placed Ferrari in the Constructors' championship.
More importantly, the Finn is confident the updates Williams brought to Austria will help his team extend its current momentum and further bridge the gap to the front.
“It seemed Ferrari were a little bit quicker today still, but maybe we’re a little bit closer too. I think that every single improvement we make is going to help, and then how strong we are going to be will also be track specific. Silverstone should not be too bad.
“(The updates gave us) the step we are aiming for here, now we’re more pure downforce.
“We had a little bit of a slow start maybe because some tracks did not suit our car that well. Now, we have at least tracks that are good for our car and as a team we’re making the car quicker all the time, so we’ll keep pushing.”
Click here for the gallery of Raikkonen and Alonso's crash at the Austrian Grand Prix
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