Williams Martini Racing
Valtteri Bottas says he was disappointed not to be allowed to race team-mate Felipe Massa during the early stages of the British Grand Prix.
Massa took the lead at the start while Bottas moved into second place at the expense of Lewis Hamilton when the Briton unsuccessfully tried to pass Massa at the restart.
Bottas subsequently trailed Massa by half a second per lap but was informed by Williams not to overtake his team-mate, despite believing that he held a pace advantage.
Williams eventually gave Bottas the green light to attempt a move, by which time the Finn reckoned his best opportunity had gone.
"It would have been nice to be able to race at that point when I had the best opportunities as I wasn’t allowed to overtake," he said.
"Obviously then we were allowed to race after and I never had the opportunity again as the tyres started to wear being behind him.
"The team, as we were in very good positions, wanted to settle things down and didn’t want us to lose time battling and that was the thinking behind us but for me it was obviously a disappointing situation."
Bottas believed he had an advantage of half a second per lap over Massa and would have been able to open up a gap across the first stint of the race.
Williams Martini Racing
"I think I could have been able to pull a gap, like we saw when Felipe stopped on my in lap I was about one second quicker," he said.
"Especially in the first stint I had really good pace, obviously with the Primes our pace was a bit more closer together and it was going to be a long stint so I couldn’t do anything crazy."
Bottas ultimately finished the race in fifth position following Williams' struggles when the rain hit, having also been overhauled by Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel.
"When it started to rain for sure we stopped one lap too late but the rain really hit us when we were around the pit entry area and we saw afterwards that we needed to pit," he said.
"Vettel was behind [and] he could react, saw we were struggling and pitted, I think we were unlucky, things didn’t go our way as we prepared for a dry race and there would have been the opportunity for maximum points.
"We saw today that we had strong pace in the beginning and we were fighting even for the win."
