Felipe Massa blamed his failure to progress to the final qualifying session for a second race in a row on traffic, suggesting he may have clawed his way into the top ten shootout otherwise.
Williams came into the Silverstone weekend on the back foot, struggling with high speed corners throughout the Austrian GP weekend previously. Having only qualified two places higher than at the Red Bull Ring, the Brazilian was far from happy with being unable to convert the improvement in pace demonstrated in free practice to a material result.
“I’m very disappointed with qualifying today,” he said. “When you’re fighting for the top 10 in every session and then you get to qualifying and you finish 15th, it’s disappointing.”
Massa did not blame any deficiencies in the car this time around, instead pointing to external factors as the reason behind his struggles.
“I don’t know if it would have been enough to get me through to Q3, but I had a lot of traffic on my last set of tyres. We were quite tight with the time and I had to do an entire lap in the tow of a Toro Rosso.
“Without that traffic I could have done a clean lap at the best possible time in qualifying. I am disappointed but we’ll fight again tomorrow.”
Massa will start from 14th place after grid penalties are applied to Fernando Alonso‘s McLaren-Honda, leaving him directly behind the pair of Toro Rossos that line up 12th and 13th.
