Rob Smedley feels Williams obtained the best possible result

  • Published on 05 Sep 2016 13:24
  • comments 0
  • By: Fergal Walsh

Head of Performance Engineering at Williams Rob Smedley believes that the teams result at the Italian Grand Prix was the best that they could of hoped for.

Valtteri Bottas almost brought home ten points by finishing fifth but was bravely overtaken by Daniel Ricciardo meaning he finished in sixth.

"We stopped a little bit early with Valtteri but the strategy played out well. Ricciardo got us at the end but he had been quite a lot quicker throughout the race and was right up behind Valtteri, but we did what we could to race him."

“It would have been nice to have held on to fifth but we just didn’t have the pace over the Red Bull.”

After a poor qualifying Felipe Massa could only bring the car home in ninth rounding off a very emotional weekend for the Brazilian in which he stated he would be retiring from Formula One at the end of the year.

“With Felipe, we went into the race planning a one-stop, but stopped earlier to cover Hulkenberg and then tried to keep Felipe out as long as possible to try and chase Perez at the end."

“The qualifying tyre we put on for the final stint was better than we expected and with one more lap we may have been able to gain another position with Felipe.”

The combined results meant that the team overtook Force India for fourth in the constructers standings after losing the position after the Belgian Grand Prix.

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