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 "Really, really happy. Difficult to put into words really. Just
really thankful to the team for giving me this car," the third
placed 24-year-old declared.
"It’s been a long way for us since last year and many, many years at
Williams and now it’s so much better. The race was exactly what we
needed at this point – clean, nice, everything went like planned
really."
Bottas, the latest in a line of top Finnish drivers that includes
former world champions Keke Rosberg, Mika Hakkinen and Kimi
Raikkonen, made his debut with Williams last year after a stint as
reserve.
It turned out to be a miserable season for the former champions, who
scored just five points in total and finished ninth overall - a long
way from the 1980s and 1990s when they won nine constructors' titles
and seven drivers' championships.
 This season, with a switch from Renault to Mercedes power and
technical head Pat Symonds coming on board, they have been a team
transformed and are now fifth with 85 points and within reach of
Force India and Ferrari.
They are still off the pace of dominant Mercedes but started
Sunday's race with Brazilian Felipe Massa on pole and Bottas
alongside.
The Finn followed up his best-ever qualifying with a best-ever
result while Massa dropped to fourth.
"I think overall the best-ever weekend," said Bottas, who took
several long swigs of his champagne before spraying the rest at
Mercedes' winner Nico Rosberg and second-placed Lewis Hamilton.
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"We were really strong the whole weekend and that’s down to all the
hard work. Of course it was a good track for us.
"You never know what’s going to happen in the next race but overall
we are making progress. Step-by-step we are getting there, getting
closer to the positions where we belong. I’m really happy," he
added.
Williams had chances earlier in the season but failed to capitalize
on them through errors and misfortune but Bottas, who had the
fastest pitstop of the race, said they had finally shown what they
could do.
"From all the data that we had from practice we knew that in the
race it’s going to be difficult and overall Mercedes have still got
the quickest car," he said.
"We really nailed it yesterday so we knew that maybe Sunday could be
difficult but actually it was a bit better than I expected. We were
really close to them on pace."
(Writing by Alan Baldwin, editing by Gene Cherry)
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