Williams race pace remains a disappointment for Bottas

After finishing in sixth place on the Grand Prix of Baku on Sunday, Valtteri Bottas admitted that he'd been disappointed with the pace of the Williams car on Sunday which hadn't lived up to the expectations raised in practice on Friday.

"We definitely hoped to have better pace today but we simply didn’t," he said after the race. "I’m a bit disappointed with the pace we had in the race because it wasn’t possible to finish any higher.

"The speed we expected to have wasn’t quite there but the team did a very good job with what we had: strategy, pit stop and tyre management. But we obviously need to make a better car now and get better pace.

"I’m glad we were able to make the one-stop strategy work, because it was definitively the best strategy to be on today, but unfortunately we weren’t quick enough. Still, we gained some good points and the team did a good job."

Asked to identify what exactly had held him back in the race, Bottas came back with a clear answer.

"Grip in the corners! We’ve been really quick down the straights, which today helped me to get some cars at the start, making up a couple of important positions right there. But we were just missing grip on the corners.

"I was happy with the balance, I didn’t have any graining in the tyres, I was able to push the car to the limit it has, but we still don’t have enough grip in the corners.

"This track has many, many corners, even if it has long straights, so we lost out there. We were definitively hoping for more, we thought we would be able to challenge like in Canada, so we need to have a good look at what happened to us to today."

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