F1: Bottas warns Williams must cut out mistakes

Valtteri Bottas says his Williams Formula 1 team must cut out the mistakes after a Belgian Grand Prix tire mix-up squandered valuable points in its constructors' championship battle with Ferrari.

The Finn, who started third but finished ninth, served a drive-through penalty because Williams incorrectly fitted a medium tire to the right-rear wheel among a set of softs.

Williams cut the gap to Ferrari to 81 points but the deficit was set to grow until Sebastian Vettel lost third position due to a spectacular tire blowout in the closing stages.

"We can't afford mistakes like this," said Bottas. "It is another weekend which we need to learn from and we need to make sure we don't do this kind of mistake again. We definitely didn't get 100 percent out of the weekend.

"We just didn't have the pace to challenge the guys in front. But we should have got more points than what we did."

Getting the option tire to work has proved to be a real headache for Williams this season with Bottas saying the team still has plenty of work to do to overcome the problem.

"I didn't get enough temperature into the tires at the start and it took quite a few laps for them to warm up," he said. "As the option tire is a high-working range tire, that's the weak point for us.

"The option tire did not work as well as we were hoping for. We were expecting the prime to be the worst tire, but today it was the better tire. There is some reason for it, we need to find it."

Originally on Autosport.com