Felipe Massa finished in a solid sixth place at the 2016 Chinese Grand Prix on Sunday, after holding the Mercedes of current World champion Lewis Hamilton at bay in the closing stages of the race.
That result was the best the Williams F1 team could have hoped for, and the Brazilian was happy with his overall performance:
“It was a good race. I spent the whole race fighting with other cars and we got our strategy right. I was worried about my strategy when the safety car came out, because I had no idea if it would work or not, but actually after the safety car the pace was really good straight away, so I managed to build a good gap to the other guys.
“We managed the tyres perfectly today. I am really, really happy with my performance, it was a very enjoyable race.”
Williams’ team-mate Valtteri Bottas in contrast was disappointed with how his day went, finishing down in tenth and the final points scoring position, the Finn had a disrupted race from start to finish:
“It was a disappointing race. I was blocked at the start because of the crash between the Ferrari’s and lost many positions.
“The beginning of the race was looking alright, the pace was pretty good on the soft tyres, but once I went on to the medium tyre the pace was not there and I was struggling with overall grip.
“We need to check and see if everything was alright with the car, but it was difficult out there today in the last stint.”
Although it was a better performance from Williams in comparison to their efforts last time out in Bahrain, the squad still appear to be lacking pace so far this season and will want to improve on that going into the next round in Russia.
