Race Notes:
- Felipe and Valtteri both retired from the United States Grand Prix with damper failures.
- Both cars suffered contact in separate incidents at the first corner. Valtteri gambled on dry tyres when pitting for repairs but retired shortly afterwards.
- Felipe fought his way back up to 10th after his spin at the first corner, but was forced to retire on lap 24.
- Congratulations to Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes on securing the Drivers’ Championship.
Rob Smedley, Head of Performance Engineering: A truly disappointing weekend for us to finish with no points. Valtteri was very quickly into retirement from a rear suspension failure. Felipe had good pace on the intermediate, we stopped him to fit the dry tyre and things were looking positive until he retired with the same problem. It’s bitterly disappointing, but there are three races to go and we have to bounce back to extend that gap to Red Bull. Mexico is a new circuit for everybody, the team has to remain positive and do the absolute best that we can. And finally congratulations to Lewis Hamilton for his third world championship.
Felipe Massa: It was a disappointing race. The first corner was very difficult with many things happening. I was involved in an accident which damaged the right side of my car. I carried on and was catching the cars in front but we had a problem with the damper, on both cars actually, so we had to stop. It’s not a nice weekend for all of us, so we need to concentrate on the next one.
Valtteri Bottas: It’s just not my day. I think that really sums it up. Two technical failures in the same day and it was the suspension failure that ended my race. The race didn’t start that well, there was damage to my front wing after lap one so I had to pit for that. We had to make a call to go to intermediates or risk the slicks. We tried the slicks, which was guided by me, I thought it could be possible. But it was the wrong call and we lost a lot of time there. In the end none of that matters because of the technical failure so there was no possibility for a result today, unfortunately.
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