Valtteri Bottas took fifth place and Felipe Massa 13th in the Spanish Grand Prix. Both cars had a good start, Valtteri quickly made his way into third place while Felipe got caught up behind slow starting Ricciardo and finished the first lap in eighth, behind Alonso. Both cars pushed hard with the team collecting another 10 points to move up to fifth in the Constructors’ Championship.
Quotes from the Drivers and the Head of performance engineering:
Rob Smedley, Head of Performance Engineering said “The car was the third quickest yesterday, as it was today, so overall we are pleased to be there. We came here with an upgrade package and it’s clearly worked. Valtteri did a good job to make a two-stop work. We tried a different strategy with Felipe to try and release him, but unfortunately his race didn’t quite work out, so we all need to look into every aspect to make sure we are in the best shape with Felipe for Monaco. We are very positive for the future though.”
Valtteri Bottas: Today we did our best. The strategy was correct and the team did really well in the pitstops, I made no mistake on the track so we made the maximum of what was on offer and got some good points from it. It’s pleasing to be in the points and it equals my best ever result. It was a shame Vettel was so quick at the end, I tried to defend, but he had fresher tyres. The atmosphere in the team is fantastic, we are all pushing forward and points feed that hunger.
Felipe Massa: I made a good start and could have made more positions, but Ricciardo was in front so I couldn’t do anything. The three-stop strategy would have worked had the first stint been clean, but I had cars in front which damaged my tyres a lot. This meant that rather than pulling away from them and having clean track, when they pitted they had the advantage. This happened again at the start of the second stint, so things just didn’t go my way.