Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsWilliams

Bottas wanted to be allowed to race Massa

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Valtteri Bottas says he was disappointed to be prevented from racing team-mate Felipe Massa when he had the advantage during the British Grand Prix.

The two Williams drivers made strong starts to the race, with Massa taking the lead and Bottas overtaking Lewis Hamilton for second place after an early safety car period. Bottas was then putting pressure on his team-mate but Williams gave the drivers the team order not to race each other before later telling the Finn he could overtake if the pass was clean.

Bottas says he did not want Williams to give a team order to let him go ahead of Massa, but felt the two should have been free to fight throughout.

"No one should let anyone by, I think," Bottas said. "That’s not racing. But of course it would have been nice to be able to race. At that point when I had the best opportunities, I wasn’t allowed to overtake. Obviously then, we were allowed to race after but then I never had that opportunity again as the tyres started to wear behind him.

"I think the team wanted, because we were in very good positions, to settle things down. They didn't want us to lose time battling, so I think that was the thinking behind it. But of course for me it was disappointing the situation, but it’s very easy to say afterwards. There were possibly things we could have done better today in the race."

With the two Williams drivers dropping behind Sebastian Vettel during a late rain shower, Bottas believes it was due to a combination of misfortune and uncompetitiveness in the wet.

“When it started to rain for sure we stopped one lap too late, but the rain really hit us when we were around the pit entry area, and the corner after, so then we needed to pit. You know Vettel behind me, he could react, he saw we were struggling, so he could pit.

"So I think we were also unlucky. Things didn’t go our way today, we would have preferred definitely a dry race and then there would have been possibility for much more points. So not our day, but what was good about today was that we had really strong pace at the beginning. We were even fighting, even for the win.”

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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.