(Williams Martini Racing Team)
The Williams Martini Racing Team have extended their lead over Ferrari in the race for third place in the Constructors championship following their 6th podium finish of the season with Valtteri Bottas finishing in third place behind the Mercedes duo of Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg.
The result means that the Grove based outfit are 28 points ahead of Ferrari while Bottas has overtaken reigning world champions Sebastian Vettel into fourth place in the championship on 145 points.
Speaking following the the Russian Grand Prix, Bottas stated:
'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 had a great race despite missing out on a points scoring finish as the Brazilian came from 28th place on the grid to finish the event in eleventh place following an extremely difficult session Saturday as a result of fuel pressure problem. Speaking following the session, Massa stated:
'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.'
The team head to the US Grand Prix in Austin Texas in three weekend's time looking to extend their lead further on Ferrari. Speaking about today's event, the outfit's Head of Performance Engineering Rob Smedley stated:
'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.'
© Ben Johnston 2014
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