What happened to Williams?
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I’m just wondering if anyone else has had this thought? Obviously I know they three stopped as opposed to the two, but early on it still looked like this would work.
In the opening stint Williams were every bit as quick as Force India, with both being quicker than Red Bull. It became apparent early on that Williams were on a three stop while everyone else was doing two but after their second stops – when the likes of Red Bull, McLaren and Force India had only done one – they seemed to be making the fresh tyres work and were cutting their way back to the front of the battle.
Massa then pitted for a third time before the safety car and was quickly coming back through again, rapidly closing up to the back of the Red Bulls. But then the Safety Car came out, Bottas pitted, and following the restart Williams just appeared to give up.
I think it’s clear just from watching that Red Bull found something a bit extra following the Safety Car period but Williams appeared to go from battling Force India to unable to pass an apparently wounded Red Bull (it was mentioned after the race Vettel was having MGU-H issues).
It also appeared to me as though Massa wasn’t interested, he made no real attempt to pass Vettel until Seb made a slight mistake. I’ve no doubt that had Bottas been allowed through he’d have at least had a go.
It makes me wonder however, did Williams really just drop off that much? Had Massa given up? Or where they nursing some sort of problem? As it was also unusual to see them failing to DRS Vettel when Mercedes engined cars had been driving past Red Bulls on the straight all evening.
I’d be interested to hear your thoughts.
The safety car meant that they fell back to something like 8th and 9th. So that really did hurt them. I guess they can just be happy that their car is definitely able to challenge for strong points and even podiums.
@insilico – But why didn’t they go back up? From earlier in the race they had the pace.
They were on the primes, the Red Bulls ahead of them had options, probably that was the reason for the drop-off in pace.
Aye, but as I mentioned, before the Safety Car came out Massa was still closing considerably, indicating he still had the pace, and as many people proved, tyres weren’t that far apart in the race.
Just watched the BBC highlights and I’m none the wiser! Around lap 35, one moment they were 3rd and 4th, then suddenly they’re 8th or 9th behind some McLarens and Ferraris.
They’d ended up on the slower tyres which probably explained why they couldn’t get past a very stubborn Vettel at the end.
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