Massa should have maximised first run - Symonds

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Williams chief technical officer Pat Symonds says Felipe Massa was partly at fault for the failure to get out of Q1 at the Spanish Grand Prix.

Massa dropped out in the first part of qualifying having only completed one run, with Williams running out of time to get the Brazilian out on track for a second attempt. While Massa blamed poor timing, Symonds feels one run should have been sufficient for him to progress to Q2.

"I think that it would have been nice if he’d got a second run in … It would also have been nice if he hadn’t needed to have done a second run!" Symonds said "He did have a couple of cars on that lap in front of him that put him off a little bit, but we didn’t really plan to have to do a second run today. I guess we paid quite heavily for it, which is a shame really."

While acknowledging Williams could have given itself more of a cushion to ensure it got through to Q2, Symonds defended the approach from the team.

"With hindsight you can be quite wise about these things, but it is very hard. Racing is about taking everything to the limit, it’s not about being safe [on strategy] or what have you, it’s about getting maximum performance. You might say ‘do you need maxium performance in Q1’, well no you don’t, it should be reasonably easy to get through.

"But then if you get that mindset of ‘well let’s do two runs in Q1 and burn our tyres’, you’re on the back foot then. You should be able to do it and get through it in one run. I guess it was a little tighter here than we expected anyway, but two cars [going early] is not unusual…"

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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.