The Midfield
Williams came close to a point as Maldonado finished P11, who felt the new aero package had helped the car but got caught in a bit of traffic, not allowing the car to really show its new pace. He was positive but disappointed to miss the points. Bottas ended P15 but felt it wasn't truly representative of the car, losing to the option-shod Caterham's off the line despite the car feeling much better than it had recently. Sauber, after so much promise, had a poor result with neither car in the points; Gutierrez finished P13, unable to make the points despite his good pace due to qualifying poorly on Saturday, while Hulkenberg had been running very well in the top ten despite struggling with the front end of the car until the team released him from the pit box into the path of Perez, giving him a drive-through penalty that cost him any chance of points. Torro Rosso didn't get things right at all as Ricciardo finished P16 and Vergne P17. The Australian said that he lacked the pace to fight back into the points following a poor start, while Vergne felt they pitted too early on their one-stop strategy, leaving them with too much work to do on the prime tyre and no grip by the end. It was a shame as he was in the top ten for a lot of the race but fell back towards the end, and felt the incident with Alonso was minor as he'd have been overtaken by the double-champion anyway.