Saturday: Bottas narrowly misses the front row for Williams F1 in Sochi

Valtteri Bottas (No. 77) – 3rd and 3rd

The Finn finishes behind the two Mercedes but narrowly missed second place: « I pushed the tires a bit too hard in the first two sectors and they started to degrade in the last corners, which may have cost us the chance to finish on the front row. »

Even though he’s starting third, he prefers to see the positive side of this result: « The advantage is that we will start on the clean side of the grid and this could be very beneficial on a new track with a lot of dust off the racing line. Being third is a good result and we have a good race pace, so hopefully we can fight with the Mercedes and secure another podium tomorrow. »

Felipe Massa (#19) – 5th and 18th

Victim of a loss of power on his Formula 1, the driver from São Paulo could not defend his chances in qualifying. He was obviously very disappointed: « The car is very competitive on this track and we should have been at least on the second row, but a problem with the car in Q1 relegated us to the back of the grid. I really didn’t have any power during qualifying and we tried different things to solve this problem on track, but ultimately, there was nothing I could do. »

He is counting on his race pace to gain many positions tomorrow to limit the damage.