Force India praises Williams strategy in P4 fight

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Force India deputy team principal Bob Fernley praised Williams for its strategy but saw the Malaysian Grand Prix as a positive as his team extended its lead.

The two teams were separated by just one point ahead of the race, with Force India holding fourth in the constructors' championship. Starting from 11th, Valtteri Bottas carried out a one-stop strategy to jump both Force Indias and finish fifth at Sepang, but with Sergio Perez sixth and Nico Hulkenberg eighth the gap between the two teams was extended to five points.

Asked if he had hoped for a greater return from the race after starting with both cars in the top ten, Fernley told F1i: “Not really.

"Coming into it I always thought Malaysia and Japan are sort of 60-40 Williams circuits, so to come away from Malaysia and extend the lead very slightly is very positive. So credit to them, they did a good strategy."

Admitting Williams caught Force India out slightly with the one stop, Fernley added: “It was a good strategy, not one we could match simply because of the starting tyre but it was very good from their point of view.

"They did to us this week what we did to them in Singapore.

“I thought they did a good job. Fortunately for us we were lucky enough to be able to get two cars in the points and just get that edge on it.”

And Fernley praised Hulkenberg for a late move on Jenson Button which saw him jump the McLaren having been held up for part of the race.

“The problem for Nico was again he had a good start but was round the outside and he got caught up in all the incidents and dropped behind Jenson. We had the pace on Jenson but just couldn’t get past him. What I did think Nico did do exceptionally well is after the last pit stop he actually came out behind him but managed to jump him on that out-lap and that got us the two points clear.”

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.