Belgian GP: Problematic qualifying for Williams Martini
By Williams Martini Racing
August 28 2016
The Williams Martini team would suffer a disappointing qualifying session resulting in Valtteri Bottas and Felipe Massa only finishing in 8th and 10th. Both cars would suffer software issues during the first period of qualifying that would hamper their performance and affected the rest of the session. As a result both drivers, according to the team, would be a few grid positions below that which was expected. Now it comes down to Sunday's race where the team has to outscore their championship rivals. The team is confident that their long run pace has been encouraging which should help them during the race.
Williams Martini
Belgian GP Qualifying Review
Qualifying Notes
• Valtteri Bottas qualified eighth and Felipe Massa 10th for the Belgian
Grand Prix.
• Valtteri progressed from Q1 into Q2 in P10 after his opening run on
the supersoft tyre. As a result of a software issue that affected both
drivers Felipe was forced to use up another set of supersoft tyres. With
a clear track Felipe was able to comfortably progress in P1
• In Q2 Felipe and Valtteri both secured their places in Q3 in P6 and
P7, with their only run in the session.
• Valtteri was the first driver out on track in Q3. On his only flying
lap he set a time that was good enough for P8 overall. Felipe only had
one new set of supersofts available for Q3 and locked up into turn one
on his only flying lap, which cost him a lot of time. Unable to set
another time on his worn tyres Felipe had to settle for P10.
Felipe Massa:
"I had a software issue in Q1 which caused a misfire so I couldn’t
put a lap together. That really didn’t help my qualifying, because I
only had one set of supersofts left for Q3. I gave it everything on my
final lap, but I locked the front into turn one and lost a lot of time,
so I’m not happy with that. If I had two sets of tyres in Q3 it would
have helped me a lot, but that didn’t happen so we lost a few places. We
will see what we can do tomorrow though. I was happy with the car, the
balance and the lap times in qualifying."
Valtteri Bottas: "Obviously
it was a bit of a problematic qualifying session for us. Considering the
software issues we had, I think we performed like we should have. It’s a
shame that we had the issues because it meant we couldn’t get a top six
position. At the end of the day, the race is tomorrow and that’s what
counts. The car felt better today than yesterday so we’ve already made
progress. Our long runs in practice looked good in terms of the race
pace, so I think we can have a strong race tomorrow, even though we
didn’t get the perfect result out of today."
Rob Smedley, Head of Vehicle
Performance:
"Qualifying was disappointing for us. We had a software issue with
the power unit which meant that we weren’t able to run qualifying mode,
so we lost lap time there. Without that we would have been around fifth
position. It unfortunately put us on the back foot in Q1, after we
discovered it on our first run and had to react accordingly. Most of our
efforts were then focused on trying to resolve the issue rather than
making our car go quicker, so it’s somewhat ruined our qualifying. Apart
from that, the cars were reasonably well balanced. Going into the
session we knew it was going to be tight with Force India, but we had a
little bit of a margin on them so it’s a shame not to be ahead. We’ve
all got to pick ourselves up now, accept that these things are part of
motor racing, and look forward to tomorrow. The long runs we were doing
both yesterday and this morning were very encouraging. We just need to
make sure we get everything right tomorrow and outscore those around us
in the championship."
Track Circuit de
Spa-Francorchamps, Belgium
Lap Length 7.004 km / 4.35 miles
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