Outside the top 10 on the grid, the Williams drivers aim for points in Monaco

Second strongest team last season, Williams saw Ferrari make a strong comeback in the offseason and at the beginning of this season, but in Monaco, the cars from the Grove team plummeted in the hierarchy. During the qualifying session, Valtteri Bottas was even eliminated in Q1!

The Finnish driver will start from the 16th position on the grid but remains optimistic for tomorrow’s race: I had a bit of traffic on my first stint on super-softs and couldn’t get the necessary pace to maintain the right tire temperatures, and on my timed lap, I lacked grip throughout the lap. We knew this track wouldn’t suit our car, and we’ve struggled to make the tires work since the beginning of the weekend. But this is the kind of circuit where anything can happen, and if you stay out of trouble and finish the race, points are still possible.

Felipe Massa did slightly better than his young teammate but not by much; indeed, he only clocked the 14th fastest time in Q2 and will start from 12th position due to Romain Grosjean’s 5-place penalty and the exclusion of Carlos Sainz Jr from the session. There weren’t major issues in qualifying to explain why we’re so far back; Monaco simply isn’t a circuit that suits the characteristics of our car. We struggled throughout the day and had a hard time achieving the desired lap times. Tomorrow won’t be easy, but anything is possible given the nature of the circuit. It’s not a very good result because we’re used to being in a better position, but I’m convinced we can still score points and that should be our goal.

The objective is therefore the points for tomorrow afternoon, as confirmed by Rob Smedley, Head of Performance: « Starting from the 14th and 17th positions in Monaco is never ideal because it is difficult to overtake, but we will see what we can do and the goal will be to get both cars into the points. »