Williams' weekend of woes continues at Spa

It hasn't proved the best of race weekends so far for the Williams F1 team, which has stumbled from problem to problem at Spa-Francorchamps.

The headaches began early on Friday when Felipe Massa crashed in first practice and wrote off his FW40. The car had to be rebuilt using a new safety cell which meant the Brazilian missed virtually all of Friday's track time.

At least Massa's team mate Lance Stroll avoided any such accidents. However the team was handed a 10,000 euro fine for improper use of its tyre allocation on Stroll's car during FP1.

The race stewards accepted the team's assertion that the infringement had been inadvertent. However, they also took note of repeated offences concerning tyres by the team, and a similar infringement for which a suspended fine had been imposed.

Massa was back out on track in time for final practice on Saturday but was soon wishing he wasn't. He earned himself a five place grid drop for failing to respect local waved yellows.

In the afternoon, both he and Stroll then ended up being eliminated at the end of the first round of qualifying. It’s the third time in the last four races that Williams has failed to get either car through to Q2. Previously, the team had gone nearly three years without suffering that ignominy.

In Stroll's case, the Canadian was stuck in the garage as the team tried to fix a broken rear endplate resulting from his first qualifying run.

"It is just one of those things that happens," sighed the rookie driver. "Unluckily that held me up so I couldn't get out for a second run in Q1 and my qualifying ended there.

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"If I had got out there for my second run I would definitely have gone quicker," he insisted. "But I think it would have been tough to get out of Q1. It is very frustrating and not where we want to be, but we have got to keep working."

Massa did get out for a final run, only to miss out on progressing to the second round by less than a tenth of a second.

"I’m so disappointed with the result," Massa said afterwards. "I thought maybe the crash would have been a problem today but I managed to understand the balance and the car.

“I was happy with my lap time but the car is not competitive enough," he added. “It’s quite disappointing to go out of qualifying in Q1. It shows the main issue on the car is we’re not going forward.

“The others are going forwards, we are going backwards. It is pretty clear that we need to really improve development. We need to improve the pieces we put on the car to make the car better. That’s not what’s happening at the moment.”

Williams are currently fifth in the constructors standings - but are just two points ahead of Toro Rosso.

"Even before losing five positions on the grid, it’s not a great start for the race tomorrow," Massa admitted. "But racing is racing. We need to try everything we can. That’s what I’m looking forward to tomorrow.

“We have nothing to lose," Massa said. “We just need to try everything we can. If we can score even a single point tomorrow it’ll be a great result."

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