30/09/2016
NEWS STORY
As it continues its investigation into the exact cause of the failure in Singapore that forced the Grove team to retire its Finnish driver, Williams is understood to be seriously considering ending its partnership with supplier Willans.
Though the team continued to use Willans seatbelts for both its drivers today, Bottas revealed that the Grove team is looking to change supplier.
"They were the same kind of belt," he confirmed to reporters when asked if the team had already changed suppliers. "Some parts were newer, but it's going to be the future races when we'll be changing some more things."
Referring to the problem in Singapore, he said: "It was less than a full lap. It was OK, you obviously try not to crash, but I didn't slow down that much!
"Some bits of the belts they kind of opened," he continued, apparently referring to the main buckle, "not completely, they were still attached. But it's not the first time it happened, it happened to me, I think it was in Brazil two years ago.
"We don't know yet exactly what caused the problem," he admitted, "but we're making some actions to make sure it doesn't happen, so possibly changing the manufacturer and changing some bits already for this race. But we need to do some tests in the next few races to make all the changes we want to do."