Bottas' P5 keeps Williams-Force India battle alive

© XPB 

Thanks to Valtteri Bottas' very good fifth place finish at Sepang, Williams is holding on to Force India in the teams' monumental fight for fourth in the Constructors' championship.

Bottas and Williams banked on a daring one-stop strategy which the Finn carried out perfectly to insure its strong top ten result.

Bottas enjoyed a clean getaway at the start but just narrowly missed the spun and stranded Mercedes of Nico Rosberg before running as high as P5 as others pitted under the VSC.

The Finn made is only pit stop on lap 28 after a strong opening run on the Medium tyres and before rejoining the race in P8.

A steady run brought Bottas back  up to P5, crucially finishing ahead of Force India's Sergio Perez.

"I think it was a very good day for us," Bottas said.

"All the cars around had more pace in the beginning, on the Soft tyre. But we knew that after a few laps it would equal out and then we would have the advantage, having the opportunity to make a longer stint and possibly try to make a one-stop work.

"I'm pleased we could make it work; it was a bit risky, but 100 per cent worth it."

In the end, Bottas felt he had made the most of his afternoon of racing.

"Finishing in 5th place after starting from 11th place it’s pretty much everything we could expect from today.

"We could really execute the Plan A, so that was good, everything went as planned and a couple of DNF’s helped us.

"It was definitively not easy with the medium tyres as they were overheating but with the hard tyres I could push quite a lot more than we thought would be possible, so that was OK.

"We scored some good points. It’s a shame that we lost points with Felipe’s technical issues, but from my side I’m happy with the race. Let’s try and repeat this in Japan."

FULL REPORT: Ricciardo wins in Malaysia as Hamilton retires from lead 

Breakfast with... Gianni Morbidelli

Silbermann says ... Bugged by Liberty

Romain Grosjean exclusive column: Haas can build momentum for 2017

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter