Massa sets Williams ambitious podium target for Spain

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Felipe Massa has suggested Williams should aim to fight for a podium at the Spanish Grand Prix.

Williams has yet to score a podium so far this season, but was more competitive during the Russian Grand Prix where Valtteri Bottas started on the front row and the two cars finished fourth and fifth. While Massa acknowledges it will be difficult to break in to the top three in Barcelona, he believes it is possible if Williams can build on its performance from Sochi.

"Spain is always a track that most of the drivers know 100% because we are always testing there in the winter," Massa said. "So I’d say that everyone pretty much knows the track.

"It is a circuit that a good car overall normally goes well because you have a little bit of everything; high-speed corners and low-speed corners. If the car works well here, it will work well on most of the tracks.

"I’m looking forward to having a good race there and hope that we can keep improving race by race, and keep scoring points. To be able to fight for a podium would be great. We know it won’t be easy but we will try everything we can."

Chief technical officer Pat Symonds says the way the FW38 performed during pre-season testing gives Williams reason to be optimistic.

"The Circuit de Barcelona is a track we know well having completed eight days of pre-season testing at the venue," Symonds said. "It is, however, a circuit that is very reactive to climatic conditions, even over the course of a day, therefore the car characteristics we saw in the temperatures of February and March, may not necessarily be indicative of what we will see in May.

"It is also the first appearance of the Pirelli hard compound tyres, which bares testament to the severity of the circuit. In general, we were happy with the car performance during testing, and hope we can repeat that level of competitiveness, or better, when it matters during the race weekend."

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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.