Paddy Lowe was left both happy and frustrated with the result of the United States Grand Prix, with his Williams Martini Racing team taking ninth and eleventh on Sunday.
Felipe Massa made late progress to climb up to ninth but found himself delayed by the DRS usage of drivers ahead of him that prevented him moving even further up the order, which was made possible by an aggressive-looking strategy that saw him finish the race on the Ultrasoft Pirelli tyre.
Team-mate Lance Stroll started on the same one-stop strategy but was switched to a two-stop midway through the race, and made late gains of his own to finish just outside the points, but Lowe, the Chief Technical Officer at Williams, felt both they could have had better results with both drivers.
“I think it was a great race for everyone concerned and especially for the fans,” said Lowe. “It’s a fantastic event that’s been put on today which included some new initiatives.
“Ultimately, we’re happy to get ninth and eleventh but it’s a bit frustrating as I know we could have done better. We ran a contrary strategy to most of the other runners with both cars fitting Supersoft tyres to start, with a plan to move on to the Ultrasoft tyres for the final stint.
“In Felipe’s case, that worked okay and he drove to plan, making up places in the first stint on the faster tyre. Ultimately, we would have made more places but the DRS of [Daniil] Kvyat and [Sergio] Perez in combination caused too much of a delay.
“On Lance’s side, he had two tough first stints but when we converted to a two-stop, he made up good places at the end to finish a very worthy eleventh.”
