Felipe Massa will start the 2016 Spanish Grand Prix from eighteenth place after missing out on Q2, while team-mate Valterri Bottas finished the session in seventh.
“Felipe didn’t get his lap right and we didn’t have enough time to do another run, so we need to look at what’s gone wrong on his lap,” explained Rob Smedley, Head of Performance Engineering.
“Because we had eight tenths of a margin to get through into Q2, and then we have to look at what we could have done better operationally as well.
“We’ll dissect everything, be open and honest, and do better. What we have to concentrate on now is the race tomorrow.
While Bottas will start from seventh place, Smedley is hoping that the strategy that the team adopt for the race will yield some points.
“With Felipe we need to be a little clever with the strategy, and think about what we can do in order to get into the back end of the points with him.”
Credit: Williams Grand Prix Engineering Limited
Felipe Massa was understandably upset with the qualifying performance, “I’m so disappointed about what happened. I had traffic on my first run so I couldn’t do a clean lap. We didn’t have time to go out on another set of tyres.
“Traffic or problems on the lap can happen, but we still need to ensure we can react accordingly. It’s a long race tomorrow though, so we still need to aim to challenge for points.” added the Brazilian.
