F1: "Today we showed what we can do," says Bottas

Valtteri Bottas celebrated his "best ever weekend" after securing his first Formula 1 podium at the Austrian Grand Prix.

The Finn emerged as the strongest of the Williams drivers in the race, despite team-mate Felipe Massa having started from pole position. In the end, Bottas was unable to fight for victory with Mercedes drivers Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton, but he felt the team had finally maximized its potential after several missed opportunities in previous races.

"I think overall it was my best ever weekend," Bottas, who started from second, said. "I'm really happy for us as a team. We were really strong the whole weekend.

"It's down to the hard work. We are making progress, getting closer to the positions where we belong.

"It's nice to have a clean race and good points for the team. There has been talk about maximizing what we had and today we showed what we can do."

Although Williams seemed to lose out to Mercedes in terms of race strategy, Bottas admitted his team knew it would be very hard to win.

"It is a difficult one. We need to work out if there's anything we could have done better," said Bottas when asked if he could have won the race with a different strategy. "We need to analyze, so it is difficult to say. For the moment I am happy with what we did as a team, but we always aim for better.

"From the data in practice we knew it would be difficult. We really nailed it yesterday so we knew maybe Sunday would be difficult but actually it was a bit better than expected."