Massa blames Maldonado for halting his charge

Massa was forced to start from the pitlane due to an electrical fault, and was making good progress until he was hit from behind by Maldonado in the early stages.

“It was not a good race,” said Massa. “I had so many problems. The engine didn’t fire up, so I started last.

“After overtaking some cars, already in the first stint Maldonado was behind me and missed his braking point in Turn 4 and hit my diffuser.

“Maybe something is damaged on the car because I lost stability. The race was so difficult for me from there until the end. One point is better than nothing definitely, but we’ll have to focus on the next one."

On his two-stop strategy with a long run on medium tyres to the finish, Massa added: “I don’t think it worked so much because we lost two positions at the end. It was too many laps for the tyres.”

Bottas scores ‘maximum result’

Massa’s teammate Valtteri Bottas was delighted with his fourth placed finish, as he held off the Ferrari of Sebastian Vettel to the finish.

“I think that was the maximum result, really, with the car we had,” said Bottas. “It was a nice fight with Sebastian for the last 20 laps, nothing much had happened up until then.

“You have to believe good things can happen, even if you don’t have the race pace [of the frontrunners] but I think it’s really clear that we are still quite far behind Ferrari and Mercedes if they are having a clean race. The problem they had allowed us to have a bit of a battle, which was very nice.”

When asked what was missing from the package, Bottas replied: “Race pace and downforce. Even mechanically there are some things we need to improve. It’s good we have three weeks, because we have time to react after the first four races.”