Valtteri Bottas admits his qualifying lap for the British Grand Prix, which saw the Williams driver set the seventh fastest time 2.2s off pole position, left him “a little bit disappointed”.
Twelve months ago, Williams locked out the second row of the grid and was Mercedes’ nearest rival at Silverstone. Since then, the Grove outfit has slipped down to fourth in the pecking order and Bottas fears this weekend's gap to the front is not a blip.
“I think have they made steps forward,” the 26-year-old said, speaking about the teams ahead of Williams. “We tried out the new front wing on Friday morning but unfortunately we couldn’t find the gains that we hoped for, so we went back to the old one.
“We just haven’t been able to keep up with the development during the season, and that’s why we’re in a bit of a tricky situation.
“Of course it also depends on the track, but [Silverstone] should have normally been one of the good ones for us, so I think the order we had today, shows exactly where we are at this time of the season.”
Sebastian Vettel’s gearbox grid penalty will promote Bottas to sixth on the grid. Asked whether he could challenge the Ferrari of fellow countryman Kimi Raikkonen starting ahead of him, the Williams driver added: “For sure we’ll try, but from our numbers their race pace is very strong, like Mercedes’ and Red Bull’s.
“We’ll try to fight for any single position. Here you can defend as in some of the high-speed corners it’s very difficult to follow another car closely, but it will really depend on the race pace we’ll have, as that’s a little be unknown.
“Especially for me with the problem I had on FP2 [Williams found some damage on the floor of his FW38] during the long runs, we couldn’t get the real race pace we had, so we’ll find out. But at least we suffered less with tyre degradation than we did in Austria.”
QUALIFYING REPORT: Hamilton survives Q3 scare to claim home pole
FEATURE: Home sweet Home - Eric Silbermann on Silverstone
Chris Medland's 2016 British Grand Prix preview
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