Valtteri Bottas will have a free choice of tyre despite starting tenth for the Singapore Grand Prix after moving up the order due to a penalty handed out to Sergio Perez after qualifying on Saturday.
Sahara Force India driver Perez was given a penalty for ignoring yellow flags, which promoted Bottas to tenth, with those yellow flags for Romain Grosjean’s crash and for Jenson Button stopping on track costing the Williams Martini Racing driver an opportunity to improve on his time during the session.
“We managed to make little improvements from practice to qualifying but this weekend seems to be a little bit tricky for us,” said Bottas. “It was tight out there – it’s very close with Force India. I felt like I had another very good lap in Q2 but because of the yellow flag I had to slow down a little bit.
“The race pace is looking better than what we’ve seen over one lap here, so we will fight with Force India tomorrow and also try to get ahead of Toro Rosso. That’s a good target for us.”
Team-mate Felipe Massa was equally disappointed after seeing his chances of progressing also ended by the same yellow flags, with the Brazilian set to start eleventh on the grid.
“It wasn’t a great qualifying in the end,” said Massa. “I was improving on my final lap, but I couldn’t finish it because I had to slow down for the yellow flags.
“Looking ahead, the race is tomorrow and we need to be ready for anything in Singapore.”
