British Grand Prix – Williams go home from Silverstone with a solitary point, with Felipe Massa bringing his car home in P10.
Massa started the race from P14, immediately climbing to P10 on the opening lap. Using the Soft tyres for the opening stint, he pitted on Lap 25 from P8, and came back out in P14, moving back up again as others pitted.
With the team celebrating their 47th anniversary in the sport this weekend, P10 and a solitary point is scant reward for a team desperate to hang on to P4 in the Constructor’s Championship – a position currently occupied by Force India, who appear to have the edge on Williams in terms of pace.
“I’m definitely happy with the race after starting 14th, having had a very good start and opening lap, to finish 10th.” said Massa afterwards. “For sure the most difficult part of the race was overtaking the Force Indias at the end. I was quicker, but maybe not quick enough to have the opportunity to overtake. I’m still not happy with the qualifying yesterday. When you start out of position things are a lot more difficult than they should be so today maybe we could have fought for more points. Unfortunately, starting 14th didn’t allow us to do that, but I’m happy with my race. We just need to make sure our starting position is better in the next race.”
Williams’ Paddy Lowe said the team played out their strategy exactly as planned, but the other cars around them didn’t use up their tyres as quickly as they had hoped for: “We had planned to do a one-stop, starting on the soft tyre. From 14th and 15th that looked like the best way to try and gain some places. The race went reasonably to plan, the only issue was that the SuperSoft didn’t degrade in the way we had hoped for those around us in the first stint, as then we would have had an advantage in the closing stages.
Felipe was able to challenge the two Force Indias at the end, but couldn’t overtake. It’s a disappointing result at our home race. The car was quicker than our result would indicate. We need to learn from this experience and be better next time.”
