(Williams Martini Racing Team)
The Williams Martini Racing Team headed into today's Italian Grand Prix at Monza looking for a big haul of points which they hoped would help them to leap frog Ferrari into third place in the Constructors championship and after qualifying in 3rd and fourth place respectively all eyes were on the Grove based outfit as the lights went out at the start of the race.
While Felipe Massa made a great getaway Valtteri Bottas made a very poor start and found himself down in the lower end of the top ten however with power advantage from the Mercedes power unit and all round competitive package that is the FW36 he soon found himself back up the order getting past Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen and making some great overtaking moves to finish the race just behind Felipe Massa.
For Massa taking his firs podium finish in front of the Tifosi as a Williams driver was an extra special moment for the Brazilian and as a result of their strong points finish the Grove based outfit are now points ahead of the Scuderia as the flyaway race's get underway starting with the Singapore night race in two weeks time. Speaking after the race Massa said:
'It was a fantastic race for me so I am really happy. I had a good start and passed Magnussen at just the right time. I had to work hard to establish that position, sadly the Mercedes were still a bit quick, so we did the best we could. Monza is a special podium, and to hear the fans sing my name was amazing.'
Valtteri Bottas put in a great recovery performance to come through the field and finish in fourth place. The result has now moved him above Fernando Alonso and into fourth place in the championship. Speaking following today's race the Finn said:
'I had a few issues at the start which really effected how my race went. Once the tyres were up to temperature I had a lot of work to do. It was good fun to overtake so many people and we had some good pace as well. As a team we had a really good day and it was good to overtake Ferrari. I’m pleased to see Felipe get his first podium of the season, hopefully we can be up there together soon.'
Williams Martini Racing's Head of Performance Engineering Rob Smedley said that the Gorve based outfit finished where they should saying:
'We finished where we should have done, although we did make it a bit more spectacular than we needed to. We had some issues with the starts which isn’t normal, so this needs to be investigated. Valtteri drove an incredible race to recover from 11th whilst managing his tyres. Felipe had an incredible race too, using all his experience including a great overtaking manoeuvre on Magnussen to secure a fantastic result. It was great to see the fans '
© Ben Johnston 2014
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