Williams acknowledge work is needed to fight for points
Pastor Maldonado finished 15th with Valtteri Bottas 16th in today’s German Grand Prix. Both cars opted to start on the medium tyres and showed good pace throughout the race.
Mike Coughlan, Technical Director: We started the race on medium tyres, and as most of the cars around us started on softs we had the opportunity to run out of sync and make up some positions. We were targeting a two-stop strategy for both drivers which we made work. Pitting before the safety car also worked to our advantage. The drivers drove a clean race and managed the tyres well but we lost a lot of time in our pitstops. We had a problem getting the front-right tyres off both cars and also a problem on the left-rear during Valtteri’s final stop, which resulted in the drivers not being able to finish in the positions they deserved. We are now investigating what happened to make sure we can fix this for the future. Overall, our strategy, the higher track temperatures and our tyre management enabled us to be in a position to compete for the top ten.
Pastor Maldonado: It was a good race for us today as we put everything together and we were on for some points. It’s disappointing to finish where we did today after the problem with the pitstops but we have to look at the positives and move forward from this.
Valtteri Bottas: We didn’t get a good start today as we had a few problems getting away from the line. We also lost some time in both pitstops so we need to work out what happened there. The race pace was better than we had seen previously this weekend which meant that we could have been challenging for points, but unfortunately it wasn’t to be.
Laurent Debout, Renault Sport F1 team support leader: We were a lot more competitive in the race than we have been in previous Grands Prix and were fighting for points. It was a shame to lose time in the pitstops, but there are definite positives we can take away; we’ve made a step forward on the race pace, which is what counts.
