Rob Smedley lamenting a difficult weekend for Williams

Williams' Rob Smedley has said that the team made a mistake with Valtteri Bottas' tyre strategy in the German Grand Prix.

The Finn dropped from seventh to ninth in the closing stages of the race after a two-stop strategy failed to pay off.

"With Valtteri, we tried a strategy which clearly didn't work," Smedley told Crash.net. "We deployed the wrong tactics in the race, which is something we've got to learn from."

"As a group of people, we get it right most of the time, but today we didn't. We thought the tyres would go to the end but they didn't and so ninth was the best we could achieve, unfortunately."

Bottas wasn't the only Williams driver to struggle, with Felipe Massa retiring on lap 36 after a collision with Jolyon Palmer left him off the pace.

"We were trying to understand what the problem was as Felipe was completely off the pace and complaining about the car,” Smedley said. “There was no alternative other than to retire because he was towards the back of the field and struggling."

"It hasn't been a great day but this is where we see the mettle of everyone moving forward and make sure we don't let our heads go down. We'll carry on improving and trying to do the absolute maximum that we can do with the car that we've got. We'll keep pushing on."

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