Williams head of vehicle performance Rob Smedley is confident his team can beat Mercedes in today’s Singapore Grand Prix.
Mercedes has been struggling with getting its tyres to work in Singapore and was a full 1.5 seconds adrift of pole position during qualifying in Saturday. Smedley believes Felipe Massa had the pace in qualifying to get ahead of at least one Mercedes and he says the target is to beat both in the race.
Asked if Williams can race Mercedes, Smedley replied: “Definitely.
“I think with Felipe we would have split them in qualifying. I think we’ve got to go in to the race not living in la la land but optimistic that we can perhaps have a better recovery than we’ve seen [on Saturday].
“We need the points. We need the points on Red Bull, we need the points on Ferrari. If you accept that it goes off in grid order and Red Bull and Ferrari don’t run in to any major trouble then it’s probably going to finish with those cars in the top four. So then it’s up to the rest of us to fight for fifth backwards.
“So yeah I would dearly love our cars to be fifth and sixth because obviously it helps our championship hopes. It helps us massively against Red Bull and it still keeps it alive with six races to go against Ferrari.”
And Smedley says there is a chance the new way tyre parameters are controlled by the FIA and Pirelli will have hurt teams.
“It certainly hasn't changed anything in our point of view, they’re not operating any differently than to what we’ve done previously. It is a good question though, has it changed adversely for other people? I don’t know, is the most honest answer.
“You probably need more samples of qualifying and races before we can see if the more strict regulations that they’ve forced the teams to adhere to is going to have an effect. It will be interesting to see.”
REPORT: Vettel storms to Singapore pole as Mercedes dominance ends
AS IT HAPPENED: Singapore Grand Prix qualifying
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