'A lot to work on' for Williams - Massa

40

Felipe Massa says Williams has "a lot to work on" after Friday practice for the Spanish Grand Prix.

While Williams is often slower on a Friday relative to its Saturday pace, both cars were outside the top ten in FP2. Massa admits the two practice sessions did not go as smoothly as hoped and leaves Williams with plenty to improve on ahead of qualifying.

“I think it was not a fantastic Friday for us, trying to understand the tyres, trying to understand the car," Massa said. "I also made a mistake on my best lap with the new soft tyres, I went completely off on the outside of the track and I couldn’t do my best lap which is the lap. After that you get minimum 0.5-0.6s slower, so I did it on my second lap.

"So not so happy for the Friday compared to Russia for example but there’s a lot to work on for tomorrow and a lot to work on trying to make the car more competitive.”

However, Massa still believes Williams can recover the deficit to the likes of Red Bull throughout the rest of the weekend.

“I expect to be competitive. I expect to be maybe in a position to fight with Red Bull. We know it is not easy to have a good car here on this track but we will try.”

Having had a spin at Turn 5 in FP1, Massa said the error was simply a case of pushing too hard at the time.

“It can happen sometimes. I was trying to understand the tyres, I was trying to understand the limit and everything so for sure a spin can happen. I’m not worried about that.”

REPORT: Rosberg heads Raikkonen by 0.25s in FP2

Drivers react to Red Bull seat swap

Romain Grosjean column: Spain will show the real Haas

Chris Medland's 2016 Spanish Grand Prix preview

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter

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.