Valtteri Bottas says Williams has more potential than it was able to show in Malaysia last weekend.
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Having ended 2014 as the closest challenger to Mercedes, Williams was hopeful of maintaining that position this season.
However, after Felipe Massa was beaten to third place by Sebastian Vettel in Melbourne, the two Williams cars were a distant fifth and sixth in Malaysia as Vettel took victory for Ferrari.
Raikkonen is fourth ahead of the two Williams cars – Bottas ahead of Massa. #F1
— AUTOSPORT Live (@autosportlive) March 29, 2015
With the gap to the race winner well over a minute at Sepang, Bottas admits Williams expected to be more competitive compared to the ultimate pace at this stage of the season.
“In an ideal race, starting at the front, it wouldn’t be that big, but it is still much bigger than we expected,” Bottas said. “It shows that we have a lot of work to do and there is much more potential, we need to get more power from us. We will have some updates coming and all we can do now is learn from anything we can, to just keep pushing to the maximum.”
And Bottas says it is clear Williams’ biggest weakness is slow speed corners, which made it more difficult to overtake in Malaysia.
“In traffic, we seem to struggle a bit in the slow speed corners, getting out of them, compared to the Toro Rossos and Red Bulls we are missing a bit, but in the high speed corners we seem to be OK. Straight-line speed is good, but we are missing in those places.”
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