Valtteri Bottas says the Hungaroring is exposing Williams' lack of downforce and cornering grip after he qualified sixth on the grid for Sunday's Hungarian Grand Prix.
Williams has qualified one of its cars on the second row at the last three races, but in Hungary it could only manage sixth and eighth. The last time the team experienced a dip in performance was at the Monaco Grand Prix - albeit a much more severe drop outside the top ten - and Bottas said the tight corners in Hungary were also exposing the weaknesses of the car.
"It was the maximum of what we could do today," he said. "It was obviously really tight and we didn't have enough speed to be higher. We always knew coming here was going to be one of the most tough tracks for the rest of the season. We knew it wouldn't be easy, but it's where we are for this track and we are missing still cornering grip and cornering downforce. Especially in the long corners we are missing some grip.
"We felt we had got the option tyre working pretty well in qualifying. We really struggled in practice actually because we barely improved on the options. We changed some things to try to fix the tyre temperatures better and that worked, but some other teams can still do a better job."
Bottas is expecting a close race with Red Bull and Ferrari on Sunday.
"Pace wise I think we are going to be quite close to the Ferrari and Red Bull, so I think it is going to be quite a close race, but here it is so difficult to overtake, especially if you can't do anything special with strategy. But we need to be there, we need to have a good start and we need to see if there are any opportunities to move up."