Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsWilliams

Frustrated Massa points blame at Mercedes

Felipe Massa says a Mercedes power unit problem was the reason behind his poor qualifying for the Canadian Grand Prix.

With Williams having been strong all weekend, Massa was clearly hampered by a problem in Q1 and failed to make it out of the first part of qualifying having complained of a lack of power. Massa says Williams needs to work out what caused the issue but believes it was an engine problem which was out of the team’s hands.

“I don’t know, we need to analyse what’s happened,” Massa said. “Maybe [Mercedes] HPP will explain what’s happened but I just lost power completely on the engine and there was nothing I could do. It’s frustrating because it was a good track for us, we could have been competitive here in qualifying and starting from the back like that is not going to help.

“But the race is long and so many things can happen here in Canada so let’s try to see if things change for tomorrow.”

Starting alongside Sebastian Vettel, Massa says it will key not to lose too much time fighting with the Ferrari as both try to make their way through the field.

“For sure we need to pass people, so we’re not fighting just between each other, we’re fighting with the others and it’s not so easy to overtake people straight away. Losing pace is not a big help as well but we’ll try.”

Click here for Saturday's gallery from the Canadian Grand Prix

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter

Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.