F1 News, Reports and Race Results

Bottas: 'A day to forget' for Williams

Valtteri Bottas described the British Grand Prix as "a day to forget" for Williams after the team failed to score a point.

The Finn started from sixth place but struggled in wet conditions, dropping to ninth in the opening laps before spinning at Club which relegated him to 13th place. In a fight with Fernando Alonso later in the race, Bottas lost control on a wet patch of the circuit and ended up losing more ground, admitting both he and Williams had a bad day.

"It was very difficult," Bottas said. "Today was a very difficult, very disappointing day. As a team it’s a day to forget, it’s really a day to learn from, it really highlighted the weaknesses of the car and the amount of work we have to do.

"As a driver, also for me, there’s a lot of things I need to learn from this race, I made some mistakes I don’t usually do, but it was extremely difficult and tricky today. We were struggling with the overall grip in the wet and we went to slicks it took me 20 laps to get the tyres to somehow work. So, it was a very, very difficult day."

With rain not a certainty ahead of the race, Bottas believes car set-up could be to blame for his struggles but says Williams needs to understand why that affects it more than its rivals.

"The lack of downforce also means it’s difficult to switch the tyres on and our car was also set-up for dry, grippy conditions, so with a very stiff car it was tricky in the wet. But I’m sure the others also set their cars up to dry condition, so that doesn’t explain it 100 per cent."

With neither Williams driver scoring but Force India picking up 14 points, Williams now only has a 19-point advantage in the battle for fourth in the constructors' championship.

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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.