Williams' chief technical officer Paddy feels his team has been lifted by their performance in China, despite not scoring any points.
A superb opening lap saw an opportunistic Lance Stroll move up six places while team-mate Sergey Sirotkin also improved upon his starting position, the moves made to get up the field had helped to make the pre-planned one-stop strategy work for the young Canadian.
Sirotkin quickly adopted a different strategy to go onto another set of soft tyres when the safety car came out to clear up the debris left by the clashing Toro Rosso's at the Turn 14 hairpin, the Russian's pace allowed him to pass other cars and close up on Stroll in the latter stages of the race.
"Both cars had really good starts off the line with Lance taking the most profit out of it, through Turns 1 and 2, and getting as high as 12th with Sergey 15th," said Lowe. "We always planned the one stop soft-medium and we stuck with that as it was working very well for us.
"The safety car didn’t help us that much but we took the opportunity to put Sergey on the soft tyre, which appeared to be a better tyre for us and for this circuit, as indeed it appeared to be for the front-runners.
"On pace, we were able to beat the Saubers but through strategy, we were able to beat both Toro Rosso cars, as well as the Haas of Grosjean."
Despite being the only team yet to score points so far in 2018, Lowe is confident the pace shown by Williams in Shanghai can give the team a platform to move forward in the coming races.
"Although these aren’t great results, and certainly not in the points, compared to where we were in Bahrain it’s fantastic to get two cars to the finish in 14th and 15th," added Lowe.
"We were certainly in the race whereas in Bahrain we were not even competing, so a much more positive feeling for everyone and something we can build on in the weeks to come."
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