Williams Martini Racing has finally confirmed Valtteri Bottas will race with the team for a fifth consecutive season, with Lance Stroll making his Formula One debut alongside him for the 2017 FIA Formula One World Championship.
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• Felipe Massa finished eighth and Valtteri Bottas ninth in today’s Bahrain Grand Prix.
• After an excellent start, Valtteri found himself battling with Hamilton into turn one, but after they collided he was subsequently awarded a drive-through penalty and sustained damage to his front wing, which hindered his strategy and pace.
• Felipe also had an excellent start, running P2 after the first lap, but a lack of pace on the medium compound tyre meant that he ended in P8.
Rob Smedley, Head of Performance Engineering: It was a very tough day. It was disappointing as it’s not even close to where we should be. 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. 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 day 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.
Felipe Massa: I had such a great start, going from seventh to second, but unfortunately the two-stop strategy didn’t work as expected and our pace on the medium tyre was not very good. This allowed others on softer tyres to get ahead and stay there. We started the weekend expecting more so it’s been a disappointing result, but hopefully we can learn from this weekend and have a better result in China.
Valtteri Bottas: I was expecting more from today and finishing ninth is a bit disappointing. I had a mega start, but unfortunately collided with Lewis in turn one which was a shame as it cost us both positions. The drive-through penalty then compromised our strategy a bit so it was always going to be difficult after that. I also damaged my front wing in that collision with a big piece missing which didn’t help our pace. The first two races of the season haven’t been great for us but we’re keeping upbeat and head to the next race hoping to make up for it.
Low track temperature probably the reason behind Massas lack of pace on mediums. Due to lower track temperature it was probably even harder to get tyres to the working temperature.
@WilliamsRacing lead the race for the DHL Fastest Pit Stop Award. Who'll handle the heat in Bahrain? https://t.co/Lgm4Sdw1Ku
Unfortunately that's the only thing they managed to do quickly.
With the increased competitiveness of Renault-engined and Ferrari-engined teams, it seems like Williams are effectively Force India this year; Force Indias are lapping like Saubers.
Oh please yes! Vandoorne would be a welcome addition IMHO. I'm sure Ron would love to hand some money to Frank and say "can you develop him for me? I've got 2 champions already, no room at the moment for a possible new one right now".
I'm guessing though that Massa will want to stay if Williams can get on top of this years car as he has said even before the campaign began that he thinks his 'stock' is strong because a team will want an experienced driver to develop the new cars with the new rules.
It seems though that Williams should be looking at getting more talent in the aero and vehicle dynamics department if they want to get to the front. Bottas is clearly talented enough on the driver front. It's the car that seems to always be what's coming up short (apart from the $$ of cause).
Did Massa suffer damage in Bahrain so that his nose can't be used here? Or is this literally the same nose/wing, Williams has only 1 copy and 2 weeks isn't enough time to produce another?
Raleigh wrote:Did Massa suffer damage in Bahrain so that his nose can't be used here? Or is this literally the same nose/wing, Williams has only 1 copy and 2 weeks isn't enough time to produce another?
I think Massa kept it safe, Massa went clear through turn 1 and we had no images of touches or anything.
All photos from Bahrain show an intact nose and FW.
I wonder what's the deal with Williams production scheduling...
Just because something takes, let's say, 20 days to produce, it shouldn't mean that the second unit will be ready 20 days later.
Unit 2(3.4,5) should be getting cooked while the original is still getting produced.
Maybe they couldn't validate the progress/improvement they got in the simulator on track. So they let Bottas test it (Massas turn was last race), tweak it a Little bit (if needed) and produce 2 for the next race.
Edit: Spelling errors (still some beer in me. The FC Bayern match yesterday was really exhausting for my nerves )
Raleigh wrote:Did Massa suffer damage in Bahrain so that his nose can't be used here? Or is this literally the same nose/wing, Williams has only 1 copy and 2 weeks isn't enough time to produce another?
Same nose and front wing!
Wow, well I'm very much hoping this precious single wing doesn't get broken, Williams really needs running time to get a handle on set-up.
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15 APR 2016
Shanghai, China
5.451kms/3.387 miles
FP1
Weather: Warm and dry
Air & Track Temperatures: 21-25°C / 34-44.°C
V Bottas, FW38-03, PU106C Hybrid 1:40.828 (13th)
F Massa, FW38-02, PU106C Hybrid No time set
Quickest time: N. Rosberg (1:38.037)
FP2
Weather: Warm and dry
Air & Track Temperatures: 24-27°C / 38-45°C
V Bottas, FW38-03, PU106C Hybrid 1:38.723 (10th)
F Massa, FW38-02, PU106C Hybrid 1:39.214 (14th)
Quickest time: K. Raikkonen (1:36.896)
Objectives: Aero evaluations, set up and tyre work.
Rob Smedley, Head of Performance Engineering: It was a difficult morning for us with the problems on Felipe’s car. Safety of the drivers is of paramount importance to us, so after FP1 and before FP2 we had to ensure we had fixed the problem. The issue had ramifications on what we did at the start of FP2, which then had further ramifications and compromised our low fuel and high fuel runs. As a group, we recovered well. We’ve got some good information now, we’ve set the cars up differently and we’ve got some interesting data to go through. We’ve learnt something about the cars on the supersoft tyres and Valtteri’s run on the medium looked quite good as well, so it’s a good recovery. We have a lot to look at tonight to prepare for qualifying and the race because we haven’t got as many laps in on either fuel level as we would like. Rain is a possibility tomorrow, we’re supposed to get some in the late afternoon so we have to take that into account. It may rain all day or we may just have a wet qualifying, we’ll just have to deal with whatever comes.
Valtteri Bottas: It was a difficult start to the day with the problem we had in FP1, but the team did a good job between sessions to fix the issues and I think we understand what happened now. The long runs this afternoon felt consistent but we need to wait until tomorrow in qualifying to determine our speed. I think we can have a good weekend; we just need to work hard.
Felipe Massa: It was definitely not an easy day. We had the issue in the morning but I’m confident it has been solved. Because of the morning, we lost a lot of mileage today and we need to concentrate 100% on being competitive tomorrow.
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