Massa should have maximised first run - Symonds

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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