22/10/2017
NEWS STORY
Felipe Massa finished ninth with Lance Stroll 11th in the United States Grand Prix. Felipe and Lance both started on the supersoft tyre. On lap one, Felipe gained a place to go P9 with Lance initially dropping to P17 before climbing back up to P15. Felipe ran as high as sixth before making his one-stop onto the ultrasoft tyre on lap 29, re-joining in P12 before overtaking both Haas cars to claim P10. In the final stages he made a move on Kyvat to take P9. Lance made his first pitstop to switch to the soft tyres on lap 10. Lance made his second and final stop on lap 36 to switch to the ultrasoft tyre, re-joining in P15. Felipe moves up to 10th in the Drivers' Championship, ahead of Lance in 12th. The team remains fifth in the Constructors' Championship with 68 points.
Paddy Lowe, Chief Technical Officer: I think it was a great race for everyone concerned and especially for the fans. It's a fantastic event that's been put on today which included some new initiatives. Ultimately, we're happy to get ninth and 11th but it's a bit frustrating as I know we could have done better. We ran a contrary strategy to most of the other runners with both cars fitting supersoft tyres to start, with a plan to move on to the ultrasoft tyres for the final stint. In Felipe's case, that worked okay and he drove to plan, making up places in the first stint on the faster tyre. Ultimately, we would have made more places but the DRS of Kvyat and Perez in combination caused too much of a delay. On Lance's side, he had two tough first stints but when we converted to a two-stop, he made up good places at the end to finish a very worthy 11th.
Felipe Massa: It was definitely a good result. It was a good race, and points were always what we were looking to achieve. We lost a few points to Renault, but it was a positive race and I'm happy with the result. Unfortunately, the blue flag took away my opportunity to overtake another car at the end and take eighth instead of ninth, but I'm happy with the race and the job I did. That's the most important thing.
Lance Stroll: It was okay and a decent race from where we were starting on the grid in 15th, but it is always disappointing to finish 11th with no points. There were a lot of tyre problems and I had to stop twice as I had a lot of degradation, which was a lot more than expected and not ideal. We did gain some positions, unfortunately not enough to get us into the points, but passing the two cars of Grosjean and Vandoorne at the end of the race was quite positive. Now I am looking forward and hoping for a trouble-free weekend as this one proved tricky after what happened in qualifying.
Check out our Sunday gallery from Austin, here.