Williams boys waiting in the wings

Williams' Felipe Massa and Valterri Bottas will start tomorrow's China Grand Prix from the second and third row respectively after a consistent qualifying run which saw the pair split Ferrari drivers Vettel and Raïkkonen.

Hampered by a wing failure yesterday which obstructed Massa's work progress, the Brazilian looked like a top-three contender in Q3 but ultimately finished 2 tenths adrift of Sebastian Vettel.

"I was happy with my lap today, we knew it was going to difficult but we managed to put together a good run while using the tyres in the best way as well."

Bottas, who finds himself on an all-Finnish third row for tomorrow, admitted losing a bit of pace in Q2 for reasons which remain to be determined. "We made a good step up from practice but for some reason, from Q2 onwards I struggled more with the car's stability that I had over the whole weekend, which was strange because in Q1 it still felt okay."

Although Williams is pulling out all the stops to chase performance, a competitive run against Ferrari in tomorrow's race still appears a difficult feat to achieve. "It's going to be a bit difficult," admitted Bottas. "We know the Ferraris have more race pace than us, but we'll certainly do our best to make their day difficult tomorrow."

Click here for Chris Medland's qualifying report from Shanghai.

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