Bottas waiting to decide on Williams future

40

Valtteri Bottas said on Thursday that there could still be more to come for him if he decides to stay on at Williams.

Bottas now holds the record for a driver staying with his maiden team longer than any other in Formula One history, having made 74 starts with Williams since his début in the 2013 Australian Grand Prix.

Asked if it was time to 'stick or twist', Bottas replied: "I understand that stick or twist is meaning whether I stay with Williams or not?

"We're going to need to wait a little bit to get things confirmed about what's going to happen next year, but it's a nice fact [about the record.]

"I've had a great time with the team and we've had some good results, but I feel like there could be something more to achieve together, but let's wait and see."

Bottas admitted that Williams' qualifying pace had surprised him in recent outings, and meant that the races had been an uphill battle to get a good points result in their ongoing battle to beat Force India in the 2016 world championship standings.

"We've struggled a bit in the last couple of races with the pure pace," he admitted. "Obviously the team has focussed a lot on next year's car and we can definitely see that some other teams are improving.

"It's more tricky in certain tracks, so hopefully here [in Austin] it's going to be better and I'm sure there are still good races for us this year and we just need to make sure we get everything right."

TECHNICAL - Turbulent Jet Ignition: In the antechamber of F1 power

FEATURE: Where and why has Williams been caught out

F1i Classic - Masten Gregory - The 'Kansas City flash'

Silbermann investigates the potential EU threat to F1's Liberty Media deal

2017 F1 driver line-ups so far

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter

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.