The Williams team has issued an apology to its drivers and fans of the team after it attempted to impose team orders on Felipe Massa during the Malaysian Grand Prix.
The outfit told Massa that “Valtteri [Bottas] is faster than you, do not hold him up” during the closing laps before repeating the order when Massa refused to allow Bottas past.
Deputy team principal Claire Williams said the situation wasn’t handled correctly and she said the team would learn from their mistake.
“For our fans, we want to apologise for that because we didn’t handle it in the best way,” she said on Thursday in the Bahrain paddock.
“It’s disappointing for people that look at Williams and expect to see our guys being able to go out there and fight for things and to let them down or whatever. It’s not the way we want them to go.
“We didn’t handle the situation for either of our drivers particularly well, so of course we’ve apologised to our drivers.”
Williams said the team sat down with both Massa and Bottas and went over what happened during the race and added that it’s something they hope to avoid in future.
“We all learn from our mistakes pretty quickly, so we have spent the last few days after Malaysia going through the grand prix in minute detail, looking at the mistakes that we made and how we can rectify them so we don’t have a repeat in the future.
“It was a team effort. We all sat with the drivers, the engineers and went through it.
“That’s the most important thing to come out of a situation like that, you can have an open and honest discussion and then you can put new procedures in place that allow you to move on so that you don’t make a repeat in the future.”
