Williams drivers say degradation holding back FW37's pace
Friday 24 April 2015 15:31, UK
Williams pair Valtteri Bottas and Felipe Massa believe upgrades to the FW37 for the start of the European season will only help the team try and cure their early-season tyre degradation issues.
Having enjoyed a sudden and impressive renaissance in 2014 to emerge as Mercedes’ nearest challengers by the end of the season, Williams have been usurped by Ferrari as the season-fastest team so far in 2015.
Williams’ cars ran consistently in the top six during the opening quartet of flyaway rounds, but neither Bottas nor Massa have yet finished higher than fourth in a race with the team having struggled with Pirelli’s soft tyre in particular.
Progress was made on that front last weekend in Bahrain, when Bottas ran the optimum tyre strategy and finished ahead of Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel, but the Finn says Williams still have plenty of work to do to recover the ground lost from the end of last season.
“Now we could at least run the two options [in Bahrain], but we are still degrading on the option tyre especially much quicker than Mercedes and Ferrari. That’s where the big difference is coming from,” Bottas said.
“With the prime it was slightly better. We are looking into it and we also need to try to create more downforce in the car. But there is three weeks to Barcelona, so we have plenty of times to look at things and fix them.
“We do need updates to help it. If we are lacking traction or downforce in general, it’s also much more difficult for the tyres. It’s a combination of many things we need to do a bit better to keep the tyres alive.”
Team-mate Massa admits he has been impressed by the light-on-its-feet Ferrari SF15-T so far this season and says Williams now need to find a similar way to keep their tyres alive for longer.
“We try everything we can on the set-up. It’s not that we don’t try to save the tyres – we try. If you see the difference [from] what Mercedes was doing before and doing last year, it’s similar. It’s just Ferrari that’s made the big step," the former Ferrari driver remarked.
“Ferrari has a very special way to use the tyres that is impressive. But we need to work and solve this problem which would definitely be an improvement for our car.”
With Ferrari effectively having jumped into the gap that existed between Mercedes and Williams from the end of last season, the Grove outfit have trailed the world champions by around a second in qualifying so far and therefore qualified regularly on the third row.
Bottas is hopeful the updates the team are bringing to the FW37 for Barcelona will help them achieve slightly stronger grid slots.
“If we can close the gap that would be a good target,” he added. “We do have updates coming to Spain and it is a track if you qualify well you can have some chances in the race even if your pace is not as good.
“So definitely looking forward to it. We are now making progress and we need to keep doing that.”
