Barcelona played into weaknesses of FW35
Pastor Maldonado finished 14th with Valtteri Bottas 16th in today’s Spanish Grand Prix. Williams opted to switch Pastor onto a four-stop strategy, because of the high tyre degradation, with Valtteri remaining on his planned three-stop.
Mike Coughlan, Technical Director: "We knew it would be a difficult race today but we can draw a slight positive from the three places Pastor gained from his grid position. We were suffering with high tyre degradation and so made the decision to switch Pastor onto a four-stop strategy. We committed to a three-stop with Valtteri, but we then lost a lot of time. We need to check the data as the degradation on his car was unusual compared to the pace we had on Friday. Everyone at Williams knows what needs to be done to turn things around and we need to keep working hard. We'd also like to thank all our fans and partners for their continued support."
Pastor Maldonado, 14th: "The pace was unfortunately not in the car today. We made one more pit stop than we hoped to because I was given a drive-through penalty for speeding in the pitlane but overall we did the best we could. We now need to regroup, work hard and prepare for Monaco."
Valtteri Bottas, 16th: "I couldn’t feel the grip in the car and we were sliding a lot from the start which meant we were hard on the tyres. We made a three-stop strategy work but in the end, Pastor switched to a four-stop race and that seemed to be better. We’re not where we want to be, so there is still a lot of work to do."
Laurent Debout, Renault Sport F1 team support leader: "We’ve worked hard this weekend to optimise the new parts on the car and it has been a small step forward. We will now put this information into the programme for Monaco, which should play to the strengths of the chassis-engine package a lot more. Some of the advantages of the Renault engine are driveability and responsiveness and this is exactly what you need out of the slow corners at Monte Carlo. If we get a good result there it will really turn us round and kick start the momentum we need going into the next part of the season."
