Massa confused by dreadful Williams qualifying pace

Felipe Massa was at a loss to explain the reasons why Williams was completely defeated in qualifying for tomorrow's Austrian Grand Prix. 

The Brazilian and team mate Lance Stroll were outpaced by the entire field Saturday afternoon, save a pair of Saubers.

Massa pointed to the Williams FW40's tyres as a possible culprit for the under-performance, although he could not say why the car's rubber failed deliver.

"We struggled the whole weekend to make these tyres work when they are new," said the man who was on pole in Austria three years ago.

"Just struggling massively. Today was really tricky in qualifying to make the tyres work, it’s really disappointing because we’re not supposed to be where we are.

"We’re supposed to be more in the front fighting the proper way.

"It’s strange, because on old tyres on the long run the car was behaving well yesterday, but just not on new tyres. We need to understand why."

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Stroll, who was confident of following up his Baku podium with a good performance in the Austrian hills, echoed Massa's disappointment.

"It’s just tough for us this weekend," said Stroll.

"We’ve been trying to work on the balance and improve the car, but we’re simply losing time in the high-speed corners compared to some of the other cars.

"On the positive side I think our long runs were better than our qually runs – that gives us some hope going into tomorrow. But this was a hard day for the team."

Williams FW40 has been revised ahead of Austria, and features changes to the front nose, sidepods and bargeboards.

But tech boss Paddy Lowe has not yet identified the source of the car's fundamental lack of pace.

"We did a lot of work overnight trying to understand the pace from yesterday but none of the things we’ve tried really adjust the fundamental issue, so we need to go away and analyse that further to see where we are.

"On the positive side, when we ran high fuel yesterday we looked to be in our normal competitive position and so we’re hopeful we can make some progress during the race tomorrow."

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