Felipe Massa admits he and his Williams team “are not 100% happy” with their 2015 results, but does not want to belittle their “positive” achievements.
The British outfit is set to finish third in the Constructors’ championship for a second consecutive time but has seen the gap to the top two teams grow. Williams actually finished the 2014 season as Mercedes’ closest challenger in terms of raw pace and entered this year’s campaign as a dark horse title pretender.
But while the Groved-based squad has been able to jump ahead of Red Bull, its efforts to cut the gap to Mercedes have been surpassed by those of a resurgent Ferrari. This has often left Felipe Massa and team-mate Valtteri Bottas racing on their own in a no man’s land of fifth and sixth.
“We are third in the championship with a good margin to the fourth, but also unfortunately a good margin to [Ferrari] in second,” commented the Brazilian veteran. “So I think it’s a good championship… but you always want more. For us inside the team, we are not 100 per cent happy because we want more.
“Unfortunately, we did not have everything in a perfect way to finish even second. But still, it’s a positive season for us. We’ve done a good job. We worked well at many, many races. We’re fighting with the big teams, which I think we cannot forget.
“Last year we started not in a really good shape and finished in a really, really strong form. So we managed to get third at the end, which everybody was really, really happy [with] and this year we have been third during the whole championship. It’s better than last year but we definitely want more.”
Massa currently holds sixth positions in the Drivers’ standings, six points behind Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen. Despite missing the opening round in Australia, Bottas sits fourth.
Ahead of this weekend’s Brazilian Grand Prix, Williams has four podium finishes. It had six last year at the same period and added three over the final two races of the season, including a third place finish for Massa at Interlagos.
Click here for Eric Silbermann's Brazilian grumpy preview
Click here for Chris Medland's Brazilian Grand Prix preview
Use the red tabs on either side of the screen to scroll through more Formula One news and features
Click here for the F1 drivers' girlfriends gallery
Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter
