Felipe Massa was left ‘frustrated’ after his Williams FW40 struggling for balance after dropping out of the first part of qualifying for the Austrian Grand Prix.
The Brazilian driver never looked to be comfortable around the Red Bull Ring throughout practice, despite a raft of upgrades on Williams, the rear of the car was always unsettled and proving to be a real handful.
“We definitely struggled to make the tyres work and get the best lap out of the car, so it was a disappointing qualifying for me and the team,” Massa said. “I had a lot of oversteer in Turn Six, which cost me a couple of tenths. But we need to concentrate on the race tomorrow.
“We know that the race pace is much better than qualifying pace, but starting 17th definitely makes our life tricky and quite difficult for the race, so we need to concentrate 100 percent on that.”
Austria has normally been a good hunting ground for the Williams team, Massa took pole position in 2014, but three years later the car just was not fast enough compared to its nearest rivals.
Paddy Lowe, chief technical officer at Williams admits a lot of overnight work still did not help their predicament into the qualifying session, he does believe they will be more competitive in race trim, this could be tricky however if the rain does arrive for the race.
“It wasn’t a good day for us,” he said. “We simply weren’t quick enough, there’s not much more to say than that really. We’ve had good and bad balance through the weekend so far, but in the end, it’s not about the balance, we just simply aren’t quick enough today.
“We did a lot of work overnight trying to understand the pace from yesterday but none of the things we’ve tried really adjust the fundamental issue, so we need to go away and analyse that further to see where we are.
“On the positive side, when we ran high fuel yesterday we looked to be in our normal competitive position and so we’re hopeful we can make some progress during the race tomorrow.”
