Valtteri Bottas’ first podium of 2016 gave the Williams team a huge boost after a somewhat frustrating start to the season.
Like winner Lewis Hamilton, Bottas stopped only once, and did a long stint to the end on the soft tires. That allowed him to jump several cars ahead and claim third place.
“Montreal has been pretty to me and pretty good to us as a team,” said Bottas. “For sure it was always going to be one of the good tracks for our car, but I'm really pleased with what we have done. Of course, today didn’t come easily. I really needed to thank the team for the decisions they made to commit to the one stop and also the stop lap, it was perfect.
“This stop was again, massively quick as we’ve seen all season so really thankful for Williams, for today and for the whole weekend. We need more of these kind of results. We just need to keep trying but just very happy at the moment.”
Bottas said that the result was a confidence builder: “It definitely keeps confidence for us that we can do good things. For sure, it is one of the good ones, as a track for us but I think as a team we did such a good job with the strategy, but the car was also good today at the beginning and end of the race when everyone was on the same tires.
“I did feel that I could put pressure on Kimi in front, and even the Red Bulls, so that was a good feeling, and even though some of them were on two-stop and we were still on one-stop and we put pressure, so that was good. I think the next few races should be good. Lot of confidence now, and this really makes a lot of good for the team, a result like this, a motivation boost for the next ones.”
