One point and that’s it for Felipe Massa and Williams

Last year, the two Williams drivers were unable to do better than 14th and 15th. This year, the team will have the satisfaction of seeing one of its drivers in the final top 10, even if they have to settle for the single point from the tenth place.

Felipe Massa was able to take advantage of the difficult conditions to climb from his 14th place on the grid. Nevertheless, his race was far from easy, and he was almost pleased with that single point at the end: It seemed like a very difficult race to finish. The positive side is that I managed to do it. It was clearly the toughest weekend of the year so far, but one point is better than nothing.

As for Valtteri Bottas, he once again fell victim to a problem during a pit stop, which clearly compromised his race. He did not hide his exasperation regarding this recurring issue within the Grove team: “I think we really need to analyze our strategy and why we lost a good position after the track started to dry. It’s possible we stopped at the wrong time but the conditions were tricky today and it wasn’t an easy race.”

The Finnish driver certainly hadn’t had time to do a first debrief with his team. They could have explained to him that he lost a lot of time due to the rear jack breaking during the tire change, as explained by Rob Smedley, the team’s performance director: « We pitted Valtteri quite early to switch to intermediates in an attempt to take advantage of the speed of this tire. Unfortunately, we had a break on the rear jack during the stop, which cost us dearly as it placed him in the group behind Werhlein. His race then became very complicated because he couldn’t overtake him. We could have been 7th-9th without that. »

Once again, Williams shoots themselves in the foot due to issues during their pit stops…