After a fantastic three and four at the Italian Grand Prix, Williams Racing were hoping somewhat ambitiously for a similar result at the Singapore Grand Prix, a track which on paper doesn’t really suit their car. Although Williams have generally performed really well on the super-soft and soft compound tyres, they seemed to struggle here with degradation – not helped by the team asking their drivers to do more than half the race on a single set of soft tyres.
Williams Singapore GP Review
No. 19 Felipe Massa (BRA)
Grid: P6
Race: P5
Probably Massa’s best weekend of the season, hands down. Not only did he beat Bottas in qualifying, he soundly beat him in the race by ‘driving like a grandma’. He had a pretty quiet start to the race, battling with former team mate Kimi Räikkönen – the man who replaced him at Ferrari, but following the safety car period, he held a really solid fifth place, some excellent points and my driver of the weekend.
— Felipe Massa (@MassaFelipe19) September 22, 2014
No. 77 Valtteri Bottas (FIN)
Grid: P8
Race: P11
Bottas had his worst qualifying for a while and one of his worst dry qualifyings this year, having been outqualified by his team mate. He stayed behind his team mate for most of the race, and was given the impossible challenge of holding off fellow Finn Kimi Räikkönen, Force India’s Nico Hulkenberg and Sergio Perez, McLaren’s Kevin Magnussen and Toro Rosso’s Jean-Eric Vergne, whilst battling with a ‘weird’ steering problem and having to do more than half the race on a single set of tyres. Bottas’ tyres were absolutely ruined at the end and on the last lap he went from sixth down to 11th. His first classified finish outside of the points since last year.
Tough race today trying to defend others with very worn tyres in the end, also prblm with the steering. Last lap collapse meant no points.. — Valtteri Bottas (@ValtteriBottas) September 21, 2014
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