Rob Smedley hails Williams F1 team's 'best race' of 2014 season

Williams recovered from tyre-temperature problems in free practice to record a fifth-placed finish with Felipe Massa, while team-mate Valtteri Bottas also looked on course to score points until encountering a steering problem in the latter stages that destroyed his tyres.

Ex-Ferrari driver Massa said Williams had reacted like "a big team" in solving its free practice problems, and fellow ex-Ferrari man Smedley said this was Williams' strongest operational showing since he joined the squad in April.

"[Technical chief] Pat [Symonds] said to me after the race that he thought this was the best race he's ever seen Williams operate in the 14-15 months he's been here, and I would second that," Smedley said.

"It wasn't just about what we did in the race, the whole weekend it was very much about the attitude we have and the science we apply and the experience we're able to apply to say 'right, we think this is the problem', and we pretty much knew what the problem was midway through FP2, so we looked at it and we solved it.

"We just got our heads down and came back out in a much better position on Saturday - we were about back to where we should have been, if not a little bit better.

"I don't think we expected to have that pace in qualifying or the race - I think that's really due to the great teamwork that goes on.

"We're operating better and better all the time.

"Ironically enough, [in scoring] one of our worst results in a long time we've operated much better than we have done since I've been here.

"If this team wants to win world championships it has to operate better than anybody in the pitlane.

"We went in with a well-founded plan and executed that plan and got ourselves in front of faster cars."

"STRANGE" ISSUE FOR BOTTAS

Smedley said the team will investigate the "strange" steering issue that cost Bottas a points finish.

Smedley hailed the work Bottas did in making his tyres last for so long, and said the team would work to understand why the steering malfunctioned.

"The poor lad drove for 27 laps or whatever with a steering wheel that appears to have just a huge amount of friction in there," Smedley explained.

"He described it as he would turn the wheel and it would just sit there, so the self-aligning torque wasn't enough to pull the steering wheel back to the straight-ahead position.

"Very strange, so we'll have to have a look [at it].

"He just couldn't get a good feeling from the car."