Felipe Massa has admitted fifth place was the best he could have hoped for despite switching from a three-stop strategy to a two-stop half way through the Singapore Grand Prix.
Despite the Marina Bay Street Circuit suiting the characteristics of the Williams car, Massa came away with one of his strongest results of the season. The Brazilian consistently out-paced his team-mate who had been running in sixth for majority of the Grand Prix before dropping to eleventh on the final lap.
”We changed the strategy from a three-stop to a two-stop after the long safety car period, and the final stint was pushing the tyre to the absolute limit but I managed to make it work. The grip levels were very low in the final few laps but I had a big enough gap to sixth place to ease the car home.
”Given the nature of the track, fifth was probably the best position we could have hoped for this weekend, but I am of course disappointed for the team that Valtteri’s tyres were not able to hold on until the end.”
Rob Smedley, Head of Performance Engineering admitted it was damage limitation this week and Massa did well to hang onto fifth position.
”We knew it was going to be damage limitation this weekend and on balance we should be pleased with the result as up until the final few corners, we were set to score the same number of points as our nearest rivals in the Championship.
”We took a calculated risk with the strategy and this succeeded for Felipe as it kept him ahead of Raikkonen who had a faster car, but with Valtteri it didn’t pay off as he ran out of tyres on the final lap which cost him sixth place.”
Comments.
Loading comments…