Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsWilliams

Wheel rims to blame for Williams tyre failures

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Williams has attributed its tyre failures during FP1 at the Chinese Grand Prix to a problem with its wheel rims.

Felipe Massa suffered two left rear punctures when running on the soft tyre in the first practice session in Shanghai, with the second coming as a result of uncertainty over the cause. During the break between sessions Williams managed to modify its car and Massa completed FP2 without problems, but was left disappointed to miss out on running.

"You're always concerned when you see these things happen," Massa said. "We had a problem on the wheel rims, we made a modification from one session to the other session and the problem was solved.

"For sure it was not a very positive day because I lost one session. The second session I managed to do some laps, but for sure it would have been better to do a proper day of running in both sessions."

Asked why only he had the problem out of the two Williams drivers, Massa replied: I don't know.

"I think maybe Valtteri [Bottas] was lucky with the red flag. Maybe it would have also happened on his car. At least we found the problem. We made a modification on the wheel rims and we didn't have this problem anymore. We did many laps in the second one and that was what counts."

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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.