Valtteri Bottas finished 8th and Felipe Massa 10th for the Williams Martini Racing Team in the Belgian Grand Prix.
With these points positions Valtteri remains seventh in the Drivers’ Championship with 62 points, whereas Felipe is now tenth with 39 points and the team moves to fifth in the Constructors’ Championship, two points adrift of Force India.
Rob Smedley, Head of Performance Engineering: It was a disappointing race to come out with so few points. The key point of the race for us was the safety car when Magnusson had the huge accident and damaged the barrier. We thought it would be a red flag and so planned our strategy around that, however the red flag didn’t come out very quickly, and so we had to pit Valtteri. The red flag did finally come out, as predicted, however by this point it had ruined our race. From then on our afternoon was set as we just didn’t have the pace to move further forward. We will now go to Monza and try harder.
Valtteri Bottas: It was a disappointing day and a shame that we wasted the opportunity that we had at the beginning of the race. We were in a great position after the start and when the safety car came in we should have pitted immediately. We then lost many positions. We tried to get the most out the race that we could after that, and I’m happy that we could at least get some points in the end, but overall it was disappointing. Looking ahead, we’ve got another race next week and obviously we need to learn from today. Hopefully we’ll be better in Monza.
Felipe Massa: It was a very difficult race. Trying to look after the tyres until the end and checking the tyre pressures while we were racing was tough. It was difficult to stay out long enough on track. When the tyres were there we were fighting for a great position but when the tyres went off we just couldn’t fight anymore.
