Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsWilliams

Bottas rues puncture despite poor pace

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Valtteri Bottas believes Williams could have capitalised from the late drama in the Hungarian Grand Prix if it wasn't for his puncture.

The Finn was hit by Max Verstappen at Turn 5 following a Safety Car restart, with a number of cars bunched up behind the ailing Lewis Hamilton. While admitting Williams was slow in race trim, Bottas says the incident-packed race could still have seen the team pick up a solid haul of points.

"The start of the race was okay but our pace was quite poor," Bottas said. "Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes were clearly quicker than us and even Force India behind were not that much slower. We were struggling with the pace but with everything happening at the end there could have been a chance to get some points.

"After the last restart at turn five someone hit me from the back, I think it was Verstappen, and that was it. You need to drive half a lap slowly not to damage the gearbox and the diff so that was it, game over."

And Bottas highlights the track characteristics as the reason why there were so many incidents during the race.

"Everyone was being quite aggressive today because it is so difficult to pass here so if you get any kind of opportunity you have to go for it. Eventful race but really unlucky. It is really disappointing to get zero points for the team but now we just need to look forward. Spa will be a completely different story to this."

REPORT: Vettel wins chaotic Hungarian Grand Prix from Kvyat

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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.