Felipe Massa has blamed traffic to explain why he was nine-tenths off teammate Valtteri Bottas in qualifying earlier today.
“It was a very tough qualifying, especially with the weather. The biggest problem I had was traffic in Q3, I had to overtake maybe five cars on that lap so I couldn’t put a time together. It was a shame, but we’ll try to do the best we can tomorrow in the race.”
Massa also ran without the latest version of the floor as his newer version was damaged after a collision with Magnussen at the start of the German Grand Prix seven days ago.
“Not having the same car as my team-mate for sure is affecting my performance. We know also how much we improved the car through the beginning of the season and I’m using a floor that we were using in China and Barcelona. So going back is never positive. We were struggling with the balance of the car, more than I expected.”
Rob Smedley offered an explanation to why Massa was so far off his teammate.
“If you look on paper it’s worth a few tenths but it depends how much it upsets the balance of the car. It’s not always an easy thing to quantify” said Smedley. “He’s (Massa is) actually faster in Q2 than he was in Q3 so in Q3 the gap wasn’t particularly representative he’s about four tenths off Valtteri here (on his potential Q3 lap time) which is exactly for the reasons that I’ve just explained (the old floor).”
Williams will be hoping for another strong haul of points as they tighten their grip on third in the constructors’ championship.
