VALTTERI BOTTAS ALFA ROMEO DRIVER

Just before the safety car, Lewis Hamilton was within DRS range. Could you have held him off? I don’t see why not. I was managing the gap over [Hamilton] and P5 would have been possible. But once the race was neutralised, the gap was gone and [George Russell] was on fresh medium tyres behind us, so keeping this place would have been difficult. Everything was going pretty smoothly until then – I was hoping for that kind of race.

What happened to allow both Mercedes to pass late on?

When [Russell] had the possibility to stop, he was really closing in quickly. As he was overtaking [Hamilton], I was kind of following them in the mirrors. They were getting pretty close. I was thinking I might have to close the door. I just braked a fraction too late. I missed the apex a tiny bit, and then I got onto the dirty surface and, even though I was going slowly, understeered into the wall. Luckily it didn’t break anything or give me a puncture.

Overall, have you been encouraged by the car’s race pace?

It was a good recovery from Friday, and the race pace was very close to Mercedes so it is good to see that we can really fight with them. It’s a shame we didn’t get P5 but still, P7 is good. It was a race where there were no DNFS in front of me. It was fighting for fifth position with this car. We’ll see in Barcelona – we’ll try to bring some new bits.

What are your final thoughts on the Miami venue?

I didn’t have many battles. I think the layout is good, but the issue is that there’s only one racing line. When you go off line, you pay for it in the next three corners. I would’ve also liked to have seen the [Turn 13 Tecpro barrier] change that the drivers requested, because it’s unnecessary. For sure there’s enough Tecpro out there somewhere. I would’ve liked to see more reaction.