Williams F1 team must stop mistakes after mix-up - Valtteri Bottas

Valtteri Bottas says his Williams Formula 1 team must cut out the mistakes after a Belgian Grand Prix tyre 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 tyre 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 tyre 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 per cent 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 tyre 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 tyres at the start and it took quite a few laps for them to warm up," he said.

"As the option tyre is a high-working range tyre, that's the weak point for us.

"The option tyre did not work as well as we were hoping for.

"We were expecting the prime to be the worst tyre, but today it was the better tyre.

"There is some reason for it, we need to find it."