- British GP - FP2
Bottas miffed by bizarre engine cover damage
Valtteri Bottas says he has no idea what caused the engine cover on the left side of his Williams to come loose in FP2 at Silverstone.
Bottas was driving down Hangar Straight when the engine cover appeared to tear off, leaving a big hole in the bodywork. At the time Bottas had accumulated more mileage than anyone after taking his car back from Susie Wolff for the afternoon session and he says the reason for the incident is unclear.
"No, just the bodywork came off, and that's it really," Bottas said when asked if he knew what happened."No [driveability issues afterwards]. I don't know yet, we will have to see but it just came off."
It concluded a frustrating day for Williams, with Bottas' issue coming after Susie Wolff's debut in FP1 came to an end after four laps with an oil pressure problem and Felipe Massa putting his car in the wall at Stowe. Despite this Bottas does not think Williams is at too much of a disadvantage as it looks to find a way to hold off the resurgent Ferrari and Red Bull.
"We missed some aero tests we had planned for the morning so it's a pity but the main thing we focused on in FP2 was the set-up work. The aero work we can do here in the test next week. One session pretty much lost for us but we can't change it so it's ok.
"It was] not bad for just one session. Quite tricky conditions today, quite windy and it's not an easy place to set up the car. A lot of work to do for tomorrow, it looks like Ferrari and Red Bull are a bit closer than Austria, I think it's going to be really tight so anything that we can improve we can help. It's definitely a downforce track and we know we still have work to do in that area."
Bottas regrets the timing of his late incident as it prevented him from gaining all the long-run data from his tyres.
"It wasn't really long enough to get proper feeling, but until then it was quite consistent, no graining issues or anything with the tyres. It was not bad until then but the real long run really starts at the end of the stint, you start to see how good you are so it's difficult to say."
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