After a very spectacular Silverstone Grand Prix, Williams’ star driver Valtteri Bottas is left wondering if his glass is half empty or half full going into next race.
There have been plenty of analysts talking about what happened to Williams during the British Grand Prix, most of them asking the question of whether or not Williams were to blame or Mercedes actually took command on their own merits.
To clarify, the only thing Mercedes did was to have to guts to actually race Williams, instead of just anticipate and see what the other team was going to do.
Early on in the race, Bottas received team orders not to overtake Massa (who was 1st), in order to play it safe ahead of both Mercedes cars. Bottas however was clearly faster than Massa and according to him, he could have pulled away by about “half a second per lap because on the in-lap I was nearly one second quicker”.
The Williams driver also added that “No-one should let anyone by. That’s not racing, but it would have been nice to have been able to race when I had the best opportunities, but I wasn’t allowed to overtake. Because we were in very good positions the team wanted to settle things down, not for us to lose time battling, so that was the thinking behind it.”
Be that as it may, the “thinking behind it” lost them the race. If Bottas would have been first into the pits, a lap or two before Hamilton, Massa would have held up Lewis just enough to make sure that Bottas would have the best chance to put up a flying lap once he exited the pits straight into clean air.
It would have been so easy. Massa was slower than Bottas, though impossible to pass by either him or any of the Mercedes drivers. If Bottas was cleared, Hamilton would have had no choice but to be as “slow” as Massa, since he would have been held up by the Brazilian driver for at least another lap, in which Bottas would have been cleared to put the pedal to the metal on a set of fresh tires.
That would have been a painfully easy way to avoid a Mercedes undercut, which was exactly what happened when Lewis Hamilton pitted first.
On top of that, if Williams would have moved first, they could have done the same thing for Massa.
Bottom line, they probably should have won the race – which would have been an amazing result for them. Imagine even a Williams 1-2 – would it have been impossible? No, not at all.
This is what happens when you hesitate in Formula 1. Williams have the speed to race with Mercedes, which means that they need to come up with proper in-race strategies in order to beat them as well.
Story references: autosport
PHOTO GALLERY
