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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26 AUG 2016
Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps, Belgium
7.004 km / 4.35 miles
FP1
Weather: Warm and Dry
Air & Track Temperatures: 25-28°C / 26-33°C
V Bottas, FW38-03, PU106C Hybrid, 1:50.394 (9th)
F Massa, FW38-02, PU106C Hybrid, 1:51.122 (12th)
Quickest time: N. Rosberg 1:48.348
FP2
Weather: Warm and Dry
Air & Track Temperatures: 31-32°C / 38-41°C
V Bottas, FW38-03, PU106C Hybrid, 1:50.151 (16th)
F Massa, FW38-02, PU106C Hybrid, 1:50.157 (17th)
Quickest time: M. Verstappen 1:48.085
Objectives: Aero evaluations, set-up and tyre work.
Rob Smedley, Head of Performance Engineering: The weather has been uncharacteristically kind to us so far and is really quite hot. With the Pirelli prescriptions that we’re running at the moment the running pressures are very high and therefore the degradation is massive. So I hope we can resolve this with Pirelli. Everyone was degrading the option and the qualifying tyre between three tenths and half a second, which is an amazing amount of degradation. With Valtteri, we lost most of the session this afternoon due to a telemetry issue resulting in an ECU change. Unfortunately, he didn’t get a clear run on the supersoft tyre so there’s obviously a lot that we can gain there. Felipe was struggling with the balance of the car on both high and low fuel, but we’ve got some good ideas on what we need to do tonight. What was really encouraging was Valtteri’s high fuel pace. I think he had the least degradation out of everybody and his pace was right there with the front running cars.
Valtteri Bottas: We had a small issue in FP2 with the ECU so we had to change it. We lost about half an hour there but otherwise it was a good day. It’s great to be back in the car again after the summer break. I really enjoyed it out there today. The car felt decent but I’m sure we can still fine tune the balance and make the car quicker. Our long run pace, compared to the others, wasn’t too bad but I think we still need to find everything there is to find. With these temperatures it’s very tricky on the tyres and there’s a lot of overheating, but it’s the same for everyone.
Felipe Massa: It’s clear that we’ve had a very disappointing Friday. It was difficult to get the car working in both the short runs and long runs, and in different set-ups. We’ve got a lot of work to do tonight to try and understand why the car wasn’t working in the way we expected. It’s going to be a very long evening but I hope we fix today’s issues.
Williams will have an 'exciting line-up' in 2017, says Claire Williams
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Asked by Ted Kravitz after the Team Principals' press conference on Friday if she was closer to knowing who their drivers will be next year, Williams said: "I do but that doesn't mean I'm going to tell you!"
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I respect Button, but he's realistically not significantly faster than Massa. If the answer to 2017 is "Button" then the 2016 question must be "Why does Massa want too much"?
Lance Stroll-- I don't know how to rate him. In 2017 he would come for free or perhaps even as a pay driver. I can't tell if he is OK or good. I could see Williams taking a risk on him rather than the known Massa, at least there could be some logic in that decision.
Maybe Williams are lining up all realistic contenders for a last minute bidding-war (lowest bidder driver-with-salary or highest bidder pay-driver)? Force India has a superb professional driver lineup, and once you take Perez's sponsors into consideration they have a net pay-driver situation. Maybe Williams are benchmarking the track performance and financial performance of the Force India lineup. Seems reasonable.
Button may not be faster than Massa (personally I think he is, but I accept that I have no way to prove that), but he is widely accepted as being very popular and good for PR...which means sponsorship opportunities and positive perception by shareholders.
Favourite driver: Lando Norris
Favourite team: McLaren
Turned down the chance to meet Vettel at Silverstone in 2007. He was a test driver at the time and I didn't think it was worth queuing!! 🤦🏻♂️
adrianjordan wrote:Button may not be faster than Massa (personally I think he is, but I accept that I have no way to prove that), but he is widely accepted as being very popular and good for PR...which means sponsorship opportunities and positive perception by shareholders.
True. In contrast, Massa's chances are hurt by the toilet-borne Brazil economy.
27 AUG 2016
Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps, Belgium
7.004 km / 4.35 miles
Qualifying Notes
•Valtteri Bottas qualified eighth and Felipe Massa 10th for the Belgian Grand Prix.
•Valtteri progressed from Q1 into Q2 in P10 after his opening run on the supersoft tyre. As a result of a software issue that affected both drivers Felipe was forced to use up another set of supersoft tyres. With a clear track Felipe was able to comfortably progress in P1
•In Q2 Felipe and Valtteri both secured their places in Q3 in P6 and P7, with their only run in the session.
•Valtteri was the first driver out on track in Q3. On his only flying lap he set a time that was good enough for P8 overall. Felipe only had one new set of supersofts available for Q3 and locked up into turn one on his only flying lap, which cost him a lot of time. Unable to set another time on his worn tyres Felipe had to settle for P10.
Weather: Hot and dry
Temperature: Air 31-32°C Track 38-43°C
Q1
V. Bottas: 1:48.655 (10th)
F. Massa: 1:47.738 (1st)
Quickest time: F. Massa 1:47.738
Q2
V. Bottas: 1:47.918 (7th)
F. Massa: 1:47.667 (6th)
Quickest time: N. Rosberg 1.48.019
Q3
V. Bottas: 1:47.612 (8th)
F. Massa: 1:48.263 (10th)
Quickest time: N. Rosberg 1:46.744
Rob Smedley, Head of Performance Engineering: Qualifying was disappointing for us. We had a software issue with the power unit which meant that we weren’t able to run qualifying mode, so we lost lap time there. Without that we would have been around fifth position. It unfortunately put us on the back foot in Q1, after we discovered it on our first run and had to react accordingly. Most of our efforts were then focused on trying to resolve the issue rather than making our car go quicker, so it’s somewhat ruined our qualifying. Apart from that, the cars were reasonably well balanced. Going into the session we knew it was going to be tight with Force India, but we had a little bit of a margin on them so it’s a shame not to be ahead. We’ve all got to pick ourselves up now, accept that these things are part of motor racing, and look forward to tomorrow. The long runs we were doing both yesterday and this morning were very encouraging. We just need to make sure we get everything right tomorrow and outscore those around us in the championship.
Valtteri Bottas: Obviously it was a bit of a problematic qualifying session for us. Considering the software issues we had, I think we performed like we should have. It’s a shame that we had the issues because it meant we couldn’t get a top six position. At the end of the day, the race is tomorrow and that’s what counts. The car felt better today than yesterday so we’ve already made progress. Our long runs in practice looked good in terms of the race pace, so I think we can have a strong race tomorrow, even though we didn’t get the perfect result out of today.
Felipe Massa: I had a software issue in Q1 which caused a misfire so I couldn’t put a lap together. That really didn’t help my qualifying, because I only had one set of supersofts left for Q3. I gave it everything on my final lap, but I locked the front into turn one and lost a lot of time, so I’m not happy with that. If I had two sets of tyres in Q3 it would have helped me a lot, but that didn’t happen so we lost a few places. We will see what we can do tomorrow though. I was happy with the car, the balance and the laptimes in qualifying.
28 AUG 2016
Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps, Belgium
7.004 km / 4.35 miles
Weather: Warm and dry
Temperature: Air 25-27°C, Track: 36-40°C
Race Notes:
• Valtteri Bottas finished 8th and Felipe Massa 10th in the Belgian Grand Prix
• Valtteri remains seventh in the Drivers’ Championship with 62 points, whereas Felipe is now tenth with 39 points
• The team moves to fifth in the Constructors’ Championship, two points adrift of Force India
Rob Smedley, Head of Performance Engineering: It was a disappointing race to come out with so few points. The key point of the race for us was the safety car when Magnusson had the huge accident and damaged the barrier. We thought it would be a red flag and so planned our strategy around that, however the red flag didn’t come out very quickly, and so we had to pit Valtteri. The red flag did finally come out, as predicted, however by this point it had ruined our race. From then on our afternoon was set as we just didn’t have the pace to move further forward. We will now go to Monza and try harder.
Valtteri Bottas: It was a disappointing day and a shame that we wasted the opportunity that we had at the beginning of the race. We were in a great position after the start and when the safety car came in we should have pitted immediately. We then lost many positions. We tried to get the most out the race that we could after that, and I’m happy that we could at least get some points in the end, but overall it was disappointing. Looking ahead, we’ve got another race next week and obviously we need to learn from today. Hopefully we’ll be better in Monza.
Felipe Massa: It was a very difficult race. Trying to look after the tyres until the end and checking the tyre pressures while we were racing was tough. It was difficult to stay out long enough on track. When the tyres were there we were fighting for a great position but when the tyres went off we just couldn’t fight anymore.
