Felipe Massa says Williams needs to improve its qualifying pace after finishing FP2 for the Malaysian Grand Prix in 15th place.
Williams is just one point behind Force India in a battle for fourth place in the constructors' championship with six races remaining. Both Force Indias were in the top ten in FP2 at Sepang while Massa was two places behind team-mate Valtteri Bottas, but the Brazilian believes the race pace is more encouraging than the headline lap times.
"It’s true that our pace is not fantastic compared to other cars, so there is a lot we need to understand for tomorrow to make the car more competitive," Massa said.
“The track, the asphalt has no bumps so it was a very good job. But also similar to maybe Austria as a track that they’ve resurfaced so maybe a minimum of three seconds quicker so for sure the lap times will be a lot quicker than they were in the past. It’s just the last corner that the camber is completely negative so the line is completely different to how it was because of this camber. So everyone is doing more of a wet line, so that’s the only really big change in the track.
“Something we need to fix is we need to improve with the new tyres. On the long run we are not so bad, I would say, but with the new tyres we were not as competitive as some other cars.”
And Massa says his pace was also hampered by a brake duct problem which cost him some running in the second session.
“We had some issues with the brake duct. We were having too much temperature at the rear on the rims so we had to stop for maybe half an hour to change the brake ducts, which was not really a great afternoon. I would say maybe I lost half the session because of that.
“It was something that was giving a lot of temperature on the rims, so we had to change. We couldn't carry on, especially for the long run, which is why I just did a quick lap on the soft tyres and then we changed.”
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