Williams with mixed feelings
Williams F1 Team was left with mixed feelings after the opening day of the Belgian GP. Felipe Massa encountered a series of set-up problems while his team-mate Valtteri Bottas labelled his first outings on the picturesque track as “a good day”.
Veteran Brazilian Massa pinpointed that his setup was to blame for the difficult Friday. He tried out different solutions, but neither wanted to propel the car in the right directon setup-wise.
“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,” he said.
Valtteri Bottas was held back by a small technical problem in the second practice session, but he was buoyed by the fact that he could climb back in his car after the long summer break.
“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.”
Bottas stressed out that it would be very difficult to find the right setup as the unexpected high temperatures surprised the whole field.
“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,” Bottas added.
