Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsWilliams

Williams 'not even close to where we should be'

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Rob Smedley was left frustrated by the performance shown by Williams in the Bahrain Grand Prix as it was "not even close to where we should be".

Williams managed to get both cars in to Q3 in Bahrain and then was running second and third at the end of the first lap. While Valtteri Bottas had hit Lewis Hamilton at Turn 1, earning a penalty and sustaining damage, both cars slipped back through the field and finished with Felipe Massa eighth and Bottas in ninth.

Head of performance engineering Smedley says the race has shown up a lack of competitiveness over a race distance for Williams which needs addressing.

"It was disappointing as it’s not even close to where we should be," Smedley said. "We’ve got a great deal of work ahead of us and we need to face that challenge head on. Compared to our qualifying pace which was reasonable, our race pace just wasn’t there."

While Smedley acknowledges outside factors impacting on Bottas, he was disappointed by team-mate Massa's pace on medium tyres.

"Valtteri picked up some damage in the first lap in what the incident with Hamilton which obviously affected his race pace. He then got a drive-through penalty. Felipe’s race pace in the second stint on the medium tyres wasn’t great, so we need to understand what has happened there as well.

"Overall, this was quite a difficult [race] for us, and one we need to recover from to come back stronger. We’ve got China in two weeks, so there’s a great deal of work ahead for all of us at Williams."

TECHNICAL ANALYSIS - Bahrain Grand Prix

Scene at the Bahrain Grand Prix

Bahrain Grand Prix - Quotes of the weekend

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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.