Felipe Massa endured a tough qualifying session at Spa-Francorchamps on Saturday as a software issue plagued his afternoon, with a lock up on his final qualifying run in Q3 meaning the veteran Brazilian will start tenth on Sunday.
The Williams Martini Racing driver was forced into an extra run in Q1 due to the software issue that ultimately meant he had just the solitary set of Supersoft tyres to use in Q3, but the lock up into La Source prevented him from setting a completely representative time.
Massa believes that had he had the planned two new sets he could and should have qualified higher up the grid, but is now on the back foot for the Grand Prix being slightly out of position and starting on the unfavoured Supersoft tyre.
“I had a software issue in Q1 which caused a misfire so I couldn’t put a lap together,” revealed Massa. “That really didn’t help my qualifying, because I only had one set of supersofts left for Q3.
“I gave it everything on my final lap, but I locked the front into turn one and lost a lot of time, so I’m not happy with that. If I had two sets of tyres in Q3 it would have helped me a lot, but that didn’t happen so we lost a few places.
“We will see what we can do tomorrow though. I was happy with the car, the balance and the lap times in qualifying.”
