Williams upbeat, despite scoring just a single point at Monaco
The Williams F1 Team only scored one point in Monaco, but it was not totally disappointed. In fact, the Grove-based squad was buoyed as its cars showed better performance than in the previous year when it looked totally hopeless on the tight and twisty streets of Monaco.
Monaco was the worst track for Williams last year as its cars slid back in the competitive order there in 2015. For this year the team tried to learn from last year’s problems. It managed to lift the performance, although it was not enough to get into the final segment of Saturday’s qualifying.
The race also proved to be tricky for the team, but Felipe Massa salvaged it with a point-scoring 10th place.
“It was a very tough day", the Brazilian said.
"Having to start in the wet with laptimes of 1m40s and upwards. It was looking like a very difficult race to finish, so the positive thing is I managed that. It was definitely the most difficult race weekend of the season so far, but one point is better than zero.”
Massa’s team-mate Valtteri Bottas finished the race outside the top 10 and was penalized by a 10-second penalty for causing a collision with Esteban Gutierrez.
“It was of course disappointing to finish outside the points. I think we really need to look at our strategy and why we lost a good position after the track was starting to dry.”
“It’s possible we stopped at the wrong time, but the conditions were tricky today and it wasn’t an easy race.”
Williams’ head of performance engineer Rob Smedley was delighted with the steps his team made compared to last year.
“We’ve made really good progress around Monaco compared to the last two years," said Smadley.
"We haven’t been able to convert that into the amount of points we should have done.
“Looking forward, we’re going to Canada, Azerbaijan, Austria and Great Britain – a series of races we can capitalise on. We’re still fourth in the championship, and Red Bull didn’t score the amount of points they could have. We’ve got good developments coming, and we won’t be giving up the fight this season.”
Williams remains fourth in the Constructors’ championship, while Felipe Massa remains seventh and Valtteri Bottas eighth in the Drivers’ Championship.
