Felipe Massa finished seventh and Valtteri Bottas eighth in the first night race to be held in Bahrain, bringing home another 10 points for the team. Felipe made a great start to fight his way into third whilst Valtteri suffered wheelspin at the start and dropped from third position to fifth. With the fight on for third, Felipe and Valtteri withheld pressure from behind. An unfortunately timed safety car dropped both drivers back behind the two Force Indias, both Red Bulls and Jenson Button’s McLaren. Both cars were racing hard on fresher tyres in the closing stages and were quicker than Vettel, but were unable to pass.
Rob Smedley, Head of Vehicle Performance: Overall I am extremely happy. We finished the weekend with both cars in the points, and good points too. To start in third and finish in eighth for Valtteri is a bit frustrating, but that’s racing and we have to accept that. There are many positives still to take, one thing we do need is a little bit more race pace. The team worked very well together from strategy to pitstops, the change over the last twelve months has been very encouraging. There is still a lot of work to do but I’m very impressed with the quality of people here.
Felipe Massa: The start was fantastic, I did everything right and I had good grip and it all went well. We were in a good position and fighting but sadly the tyre degradation was worse than we expected. The safety car didn’t help the strategy as I think we should have been up with the Force Indias rather than behind the Red Bulls so that is a shame. Other than that it was a good race, with some good battles and to finish with both cars in the points is really positive.
Valtteri Bottas: After a poor start our race strategy was compromised. I had too much wheelspin and that lost me a few positions which is frustrating. We had issues with the tyres that were worse than expected but on a positive note we got some good points from both cars. We always want more though, so we will continue to work hard and look forward to the next race.
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