(Williams Martini Racing Team)
The Williams Martini Racing Team are well placed to extend their advantage over Ferrari in the Constructors championship at the United States Grand Prix on Sunday at the Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas as Valtteri Bottas will start the race from third place on the grid while Felipe Massa will start the race from 4th place on the grid.
Bottas who moved up to fourth place in the drivers championship following the Russian Grand Prix three weeks ago will start the race from third behind the two Mercedes for the fifth race in a row and will be hoping that he can score his sixth podium finish of the season having scored his first ever Formula One points in Austin in 2013. Speaking following Saturday's running the Finn stated:
'A very good session today and I felt like I got everything out of the car that I could with two good flying laps. It took me a while this week to get the balance right and to get the car to a stage where I could fully trust it, but we got it right when it mattered.
It will be difficult to catch the Mercedes cars as they are still ahead in terms of raw pace so we need to be ready to capitalise in case they have any problems, but also to not do anything too risky as we need to stay ahead of those behind us. '
Felipe Massa did a great job for the Grove based outfit as the Brazilian will start the race from fourth place on the grid just ahead of former team mate Fernando Alonso. Speaking following the session stated:
'Another strong qualifying performance from the team and third and fourth is the best we could have achieved today.
The car is looking competitive and whilst Mercedes are still looking very strong, we are the best of the rest and we showed good long run pace yesterday which is encouraging for tomorrow.
I would have liked to have finished ahead of Valtteri because I’m now on the dirty side of the grid, but I still have a good chance to finish on the podium so we need to make sure that we get the strategy right to make the most of our speed.'
The Williams Martini Racing Team head into Sunday's race having scored points in every Grand Prix so far this season when at this stage last season had scored just one point compared to their 216 points scored so far in 2014. Speaking following the session, Williams Martini Racing Team's Head of Performance Engineering Rob Smedley stated:
'We came into this weekend expecting to have the second fastest car and we have met our expectations so far by qualifying third and fourth.
Realising your targets is not always an easy thing to do in qualifying because there are so many variables, so it was a very good job by the team and the drivers.
There are a number of strategies open to us and we now need to do our homework to understand how we protect these positions and possibly move forwards in the race.'
© Ben Johnston 2014
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