Bottas: I really felt like someone had put in a knife

Valtteri Bottas says modifications have been made to his Williams ahead of the Malaysian Grand Prix weekend, in an effort to keep him comfortable int he wake of his back injury suffered during qualifying in Melbourne.

The Finn got clearance from FIA doctors on Thursday to return for Williams this weekend in Malaysia, after tearing a disc in his lower back two weeks ago.

His manager, Mika Hakkinen, speculated that a problem with his seat may have caused the problem over the bumps in Melbourne.

"We have a good idea what caused it," Bottas confirmed at Sepang, "and have changed the seat and pedal positions. My back is now in more of a neutral position."

He said he is confident the problems will not arise again, and denied speculation that surgery to completely correct the issue will be necessary.

"It’s good, no pain, so that’s nice. The end of last week I could do something without pain, and during the weekend I could do some training, swimming and cross training, without any pain."

"The recovery was really good. We did everything we can in this short period of time, but luckily it was two weeks, and I feel confident to go back in the car."

"I’ve never had any problems before with the lower back, and obviously that kind of thing takes a bit of time to build up. There was no warning, it just went suddenly, I never had any pain before. It was maximum braking into Turn 13, and it was the last timed lap of qualy 2."

"I really felt like someone had put in a knife, and then it was ramping up, the pain, until midnight. Luckily then it started to ease off during the night and then in the morning I would have been ready to race," added Bottas.