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No price tag for Bottas - Williams

Claire Williams insists Williams was held no interesting in selling Valtteri Bottas to Ferrari despite negotiations earlier this season.

Bottas signed a contract extension ahead of the Italian Grand Prix after Ferrari opted to retain Kimi Raikkonen for 2016. However, talks had taken place between the two teams over the potential for Ferrari to buy Bottas to replace his fellow Finn.

When it was put to the deputy team principal that Williams was never interested in selling Bottas to Ferrari, she replied: “Not really, no.

“Why would you? I don’t think you can put a price tag on someone like Valtteri. Valtteri is such an integral part of the transformation here, he’s been with the team for six years now, everyone knows the talent that he has. Not just from a pure driving perspective but he brings the full package.

“When we’re going out and we’re talking to shareholders and partners and telling them that Valtteri is a part of our long-term plan, to have to change that because he’s no longer part of it and to go back to everybody that we’ve told is a part of it, you can’t really quantify that in terms of money that you could potentially get back for him.”

And Williams wants to keep Bottas at the team longer term, but says it must produce a car that matches his potential.

“He’s signed for 2016, it would be lovely if we could keep him here for longer than that but that’s down to us, isn’t it? We’ve got to give him the car that he deserves to show his talent and the car that he can win races in. So I would love it if Valtteri was with the team throughout his whole career because he’s such a great talent but it’s really for us to make sure that we can give him the car.”

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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.