Qualifying - Brazilian GP report: Williams Mercedes

— Valtteri Bottas qualified 11th and Felipe Massa 13th for the Brazilian Grand Prix.
— Valtteri’s single run in Q1 was enough to progress to Q2 in P9. Felipe ran twice, with his second run on soft tyres sending him through in P8.
— Valtteri was P7 after the first run in Q2, but as the field tightened his second run wasn’t enough to progress into Q3, falling short by just a tenth of a second.
— Felipe improved on the second lap of his first run of Q2, to sit P8 on the leaderboard. However, as other cars crossed the line, Felipe dropped into the knock-out zone and was unable to improve on his second run after suffering from understeer.

Rob Smedley, Head of Performance Engineering

Today’s qualifying was disappointing for us because the car has been quick, especially over one lap, all weekend. When we needed to put the laps together, they just didn’t come off. It’s unfortunate because we were just a few tenths off Ferrari, right up until the time we needed to get the important laps in and they didn’t come. That’s just how it is, and we’ve got to look ahead positively to the race. We’re starting on the clean side with a free choice of tyres, so we’ll have a look at what we’re going to do with the strategy. The car is quick and it’s been very good in the long runs, so we’ll see what comes out of it tomorrow. I’m sure we can score some good points.

Valtteri Bottas

It’s obviously disappointing to be out before Q3. Our pace all weekend has been very good, as has the set-up; but for some reason in qualifying we were just not quick enough, while some other cars were surprisingly fast. I doubt we got everything out of these cooler conditions today, but the race is tomorrow. It will be a fight with Force India again, but at least now we might have the upper hand with the strategy.

Felipe Massa

This definitely wasn’t the greatest result because I expected to easily be fighting in Q3. The car didn’t work in the proper way and the front tyres stopped working. I was suffering from understeer and my best lap of Q2 ended up being my first one, so we need to understand what happened. But it was absolutely amazing to get out of the car and feel the support from the crowd, and to feel the love I have for these people as well as the love they have for me. I’m not happy with the result for them, but I will try everything I can tomorrow to give them a better result, as well as for my team, especially as it’s my last race here in Brazil.