Massa was driving his Williams F1 “like a grandmother” in Singapore

« I didn’t think it would be possible to make the tires last until the end, but I completely changed my driving style: I was driving like a grandma! » Although losing time to his opponents, Brazilian Felipe Massa managed to make his Williams’ tires last, changed during the safety car intervention. But it wasn’t easy: « I thought it was a joke when they said that. There were about 25 laps to go, it was a lot. »

This strategy was clearly not planned at Williams before the intervention of the safety car, which stayed on track much longer than expected: indeed, it allowed the drivers to save numerous laps in terms of tire lifespan. When the safety car came out, we thought we would not be able to make it to the end of the race. Depending on the time spent behind the safety car, the race could have been different for the Williams drivers, with a final stop to fit soft tires.

But the interruption of the race lasted longer than expected, and it had two effects: « First, it shortened the race with the two-hour limit, and it also meant that we did many laps under the safety car regime with that set of tires, » he explained to Autosport.

The decision was therefore made at Williams to extend the last stint of their drivers by 10 laps: “We thought we could wait for 21 laps with this set of tires, so we were asking for 10 more laps. It wasn’t a big ask. We asked our drivers to slow down their pace, knowing that if we still had good traction at the end of the race, no one would overtake us with our straight-line speed,” stated Rob Smedley, the head of performance for the British team.

If Felipe Massa managed to reach the finish in a decent pace in fifth place, this strategy did not work for Valtteri Bottas, who was struggling with his tires, causing him to lose the benefit of a sixth place in the final laps, finishing ultimately 11th.