Felipe Massa says the gap to team-mate Valtteri Bottas is a reflection of how difficult tyre usage was during Friday practice for the Mexican Grand Prix.
Bottas finished FP2 in eighth place, while Massa was 0.7s slower than his team-mate as he ended the session in 13th position. With a number of drivers complaining about low grip throughout Friday's running, Massa says preparing the tyres well for a flying lap was extremely tricky.
“The grip was really low, it was very difficult to make the tyres work," Massa said. "So I was really struggling to put the lap together with the first lap on the tyres, just really oversteer with no grip.
"On the long run at the beginning it was not great but then at the end it was really good so understanding the tyres will be the most important thing for the weekend. Hopefully we understand enough to make things work in a proper way.”
"I couldn’t put together a lap on the first lap. So I’m sure tomorrow will be different but we need to understand better how to make the tyres work.”
With constructors' championship Force India completing its best laps on soft tyres rather than supersofts in FP2 - and Nico Hulkenberg duly setting the sixth fastest time - Massa says there is more performance to come from Williams.
“Well if you see my lap time was 0.2s slower than this morning with the supersoft, so for sure it could have been quicker. The long run I think we were quite reasonable and competitive, so we need to wait and see.”
Chris Medland's 2016 Mexican Grand Prix preview
Scene at the United States Grand Prix
Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter
