Williams annoyed to have lost 'at least 10 points' at Sochi
Williams' Valtteri Bottas finished third and Felipe Massa 11th in today’s Russian Grand Prix. As Valtteri drove consistently to his fifth podium of the season, Felipe got stuck in traffic and failed to make it into the points following an early pitstop.
Rob Smedley, Head of Performance Engineering: "A great result today to secure 15 points and we have extended our third position in the Constructors’ by five points which is important. Valtteri put in a very mature performance and its great see him up to fourth in the Drivers’ standings. It’s been a very disappointing weekend for Felipe and it was the reliability issue yesterday that put him very much on the back foot. We have lost at least 10 points on his car today so going forwards we need to focus on making sure that we get all of the little details right and maximise the points we score because we know the car is quick and can fight with teams at the front."
Valtteri Bottas, 3rd: "We went into the race today with the mentality that we were going to fight Mercedes for the win, but their pace in the race surprised us a bit and in the end we need to be satisfied with third place and another podium. I was keeping pace with Hamilton at the beginning but in the middle of my first stint the rear tyres started to go away and that allowed him to create a gap. In the second stint I didn’t realise Rosberg was quite as close as he was and his move caught me a bit by surprise, but he had more pace at that point anyway as my prime tyres were taking a good ten laps to switch on so he would have caught me regardless. I was closing in the final laps as my tyres were getting better but he had managed to create too big a gap. I’m very happy to be in fourth place in the standings and we have some great momentum heading into the US Grand Prix."
Felipe Massa, 11th: "My strategy today was undermined by traffic and that prevented me from getting in the points. We decided to stop on the first lap and after that I was in clean air and had good pace on the option tyres so made up a good number of positions. I then came up against Perez who had strong straight line speed so I lost a lot of time behind him. After my second stop I soon found myself behind Perez again and I didn’t really have any good opportunities to take a risk and pass him. Of course it’s disappointing to finish 11th when we had a very competitive car, but we are looking strong at this point in the season so we need to focus now on Austin and making sure that the race is problem free."
