The Williams Martini Racing team entered the Malaysian Grand Prix hoping for a strong performance, but despite finishing fifth and sixth, neither Valtteri Bottas nor Felipe Massa were happy to finish over a minute away from race winner Sebastian Vettel.
Bottas lost a number of positions at the start after finding himself boxed in around the first couple of corners, but fought back to close the gap to his team-mate before passing him with just a handful of laps remaining. The Finn was happy with his recovery, but is eager for the team to introduce some updates so they can close the gap down to those upfront.
“It was a nice race in the end,” revealed Bottas. “I was always in the wrong place at the start and lost a lot of time and positions. I made the most of the performance of the car and it was great to be able to race Felipe at the end.
“We know we have some work to do, we need to learn from our mistakes and keep progressing. We have some upgrades that are due shortly, which will hopefully be a further step in the right direction.”
Massa was disappointed with his afternoon’s work, with the Brazilian falling to sixth at the end of the race when Bottas found a way past. He was disappointed to fall over a minute behind the race winner Vettel, but felt where they finished in Malaysia was about right with the FW37 as it currently is.
“I don’t think we had a fantastic day today,” reflected Massa. “We had a small problem in the pit stop which lost a little time.
“Valtteri was able to catch me in the final few laps, but it was good to race wheel-to-wheel. We have got the best points we could for the team given the where the car is at the moment.”
