27/08/2017
NEWS STORY
Felipe Massa finished 8th and Lance Stroll 11th in the Belgian Grand Prix. Both drivers had a strong start to the race on the supersoft tyre with Lance maintaining position whilst Felipe made up two places to P14 from P16 on the grid.
Lance pitted for a set of soft tyres on lap nine and re-joined in P17. Felipe pitted on lap 11 from P8 for a set of soft tyres.
Both drivers benefitted from a safety car on lap 29 and pitted for the ultrasoft tyres with Felipe coming back out in P8 and Lance in P14. Felipe maintained position whilst Lance made good progress on the ultrasoft tyre to make up three places to P11.
Felipe is now 11th in the Drivers' Championship, ahead of Lance in 13th. The team remains fifth in the Constructors' Championship with 45 points.
Paddy Lowe, Chief Technical Officer: Congratulations to Felipe for a great race and four points. After his difficulties through the last month with missing the race in Hungary, it is great that he could come back to such a challenging circuit and deliver a strong result for the team. I am sure no one is happier about that than he is. With Lance, one or two missed opportunities, so not a perfect race, but he brought the car home just outside the points, so it was a credit worthy result. It was a very difficult weekend up to today for the team and both drivers, so overall we were happy to put that right to some extent during the race today.
Felipe Massa: I'm very happy with the race today, it was like a victory. Great start, great overtakes, good pace for the car we struggled with yesterday, so I'm really happy and also to be able to keep the cars behind at the end. I think today was a very intense race, but I'm so happy. I know eighth place is not a nice position, looking at everything I have achieved in my career, but today the way I drove the car and the way I drove in this race, it was definitely like a victory and I'm so happy. For sure there's a lot to understand and improve in the car, like what wasn't working in the last two races, but I'm happy with the perfect race I had today.
Lance Stroll: Certainly this was better than yesterday, but we just missed out on the points, which was unfortunate. We got lucky with other cars dropping out, but today was definitely a lot better. It was unfortunate that I had damage at the end when overtaking Magnussen at the safety car restart. I broke a piece of the front wing and just had to survive until the end. Without this I could have been attacking Sainz for points, but it was a good race with plenty of stuff happening and I had fun. It was great to see the car was working better in the race than in qualifying.
Check out our Sunday gallery from Spa, here.