the improvements in the engine of Mercedes for this final stretch of the season have yielded dividends for Williams this weekend. The british team, whose performance had suffered from a certain decline in the last few months, he managed to access with the two cars into Q3 for the first time since Belgium, and in the race, the seventh of Felipe Massa has allowed them to trim two points of Force India in the fight for the fourth place in the constructors.
The brazilian driver managed to gain two positions in the output with the incident of his teammate Valtteri Bottas and Nico Hülkenberg, and the abandonment of Max Verstappen he rose to sixth place. However, Carlos Sainz snatched the position by making his stop during the Virtual Safety Car. Massa fought for 20 turns to recover what was already a fifth, but without success, and a few laps from the end, Fernando Alonso, that had given them hunting, I stepped forward in a move that both touched it. Even so, his seventh final position is his best result in the race from his 6th place in the Grand Prix of Russia.
The action was investigated after the race, but finally Alonso did not receive any kind of punishment. At the end of the test, Massa criticized the maneuver of Alonso, accusing him of “trashing” your choices to get more points, and he regretted that the bad luck with the Virtual Safety Car he was deprived of the fifth position:
“I Was taking the curve, and Alonso went into the inside completely. was Already entering the curve and hit my car, and I had a puncture. Shattered the opportunities that I had at that time. So yes, I think that it is your responsibility, for sure.”
“I Had a very good start, and the race went fantastically. I avoided incidents at the first corner, and I managed to overtake two cars. Our pace was really good, and I managed to open a gap with the cars behind. I Had very bad luck with the Virtual Safety Car, because it took nine seconds to Sainz and came out in front of me. Even so, we’ve finished seventh and we’ve reduced the disadvantage with Force India, but should have been more”.
For Valtteri Bottas, the race was bad from the beginning. Starting from the eighth position, the finn collided with Nico Hülkenberg on the first lap, and had to stop in the pits to change a punctured tire. Since then, his day was against the current, fighting with slower cars with a car damaged, and lost the battle with the Sauber of Felipe Nasr, ending up in 15th position.
Bottas was chary of words about your Sunday, explaining that the problems of the aerodynamics suffered in the incident burdened his performance, and brought out as a positive conclusion to have added more points as a team than Force India.
“I went into the first curve on the inside, and had a good line for the curve, but in the vertex, Hülkenberg hit me and I had a puncture. It also damaged the bottom plane of the car, and I missed a lot of burden for the rest of the test. It has been a disappointing day. I am glad that there is another race soon next week in Mexico, to try to compensate for this. The positive thing is that we have reduced the gap with Force India a little bit, but we have to make sure that we add points with both cars”.
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