Race Notes:
– Felipe Massa finished 8th and Lance Stroll 11th in the Belgian Grand Prix
– Both drivers had a strong start to the race on the supersoft tyre with Lance maintaining position whilst Felipe made up two places to P14 from P16 on the grid
– Lance pitted for a set of soft tyres on lap nine and re-joined in P17
– Felipe pitted on lap 11 from P8 for a set of soft tyres
– Both drivers benefitted from a safety car on lap 29 and pitted for the ultrasoft tyres with Felipe coming back out in P8 and Lance in P14
– Felipe maintained position whilst Lance made good progress on the ultrasoft tyre to make up three places to P11
– Felipe is now 11th in the Drivers’ Championship, ahead of Lance in 13th. The team remains fifth in the Constructors’ Championship with 45 points
Paddy Lowe, Chief Technical Officer: Congratulations to Felipe for a great race and four points. After his difficulties through the last month with missing the race in Hungary, it is great that he could come back to such a challenging circuit and deliver a strong result for the team. I am sure no one is happier about that than he is. With Lance, one or two missed opportunities, so not a perfect race, but he brought the car home just outside the points, so it was a credit worthy result. It was a very difficult weekend up to today for the team and both drivers, so overall we were happy to put that right to some extent during the race today.
Felipe Massa: I’m very happy with the race today, it was like a victory. Great start, great overtakes, good pace for the car we struggled with yesterday, so I’m really happy and also to be able to keep the cars behind at the end. I think today was a very intense race, but I’m so happy. I know eighth place is not a nice position, looking at everything I have achieved in my career, but today the way I drove the car and the way I drove in this race, it was definitely like a victory and I’m so happy. For sure there’s a lot to understand and improve in the car, like what wasn’t working in the last two races, but I’m happy with the perfect race I had today.
Lance Stroll: Certainly this was better than yesterday, but we just missed out on the points, which was unfortunate. We got lucky with other cars dropping out, but today was definitely a lot better. It was unfortunate that I had damage at the end when overtaking Magnussen at the safety car restart. I broke a piece of the front wing and just had to survive until the end. Without this I could have been attacking Sainz for points, but it was a good race with plenty of stuff happening and I had fun. It was great to see the car was working better in the race than in qualifying.
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