Felipe Massa says Williams’ lack of pace ahead of qualifying for the British Grand Prix is a concern, as the Brazilian admits the front runners are “massively quicker”.
Massa was only 14th in FP1 on Friday morning before improving to P10 in the afternoon. Although team-mate Valtteri Bottas finished seventh in FP2, the Finn placed 1.8s off Mercedes’ pace, sandwiched in between McLaren-Honda’s Fernando Alonso and Haas’ Romain Grosjean.
“I think the biggest concern is that we didn’t show anything interesting in our pace,” Massa said.
“I’m not comparing with McLaren or Haas, but comparing to the guys in front, they are massively quicker than us so it is a little concern and I hope we can improve on Saturday. But there is a lot of work to do.”
“I don’t think there was anything really wrong, we were just not really on a good pace so we need to understand where to go because the pace was not so competitive.”
In its efforts to bridge the gap to the front, Williams sampled a new spec of front wing on practice day. Massa concedes the impact of the upgrade was not evident right away.
“We are still analysing the front wing. At the beginning of [FP1], I had the old wing and then I went to the new one, then back to the old one, so there is a lot to analyse to be honest.”
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