Qualifying - Canadian GP report: Williams Mercedes

Qualifying Notes

— Valtteri Bottas qualified seventh and Felipe Massa eighth for the Canadian Grand Prix
— Both cars made it comfortably through into Q2 and Q3, despite the tricky overcast conditions
— Felipe was fastest through the speed trap during qualifying at 336.7kph, Valtteri was second fastest at 336.6kph

Rob Smedley, Head of Performance Engineering

I think we got what we could out of the car today. It’s disappointing to come here and have the fourth quickest car, but at this time, that is the fact. We know this and so we need to focus on improving it. We’ve qualified on the fourth row with both cars so therefore I think we’ve extracted what we could. On the whole I think it’s been a reasonable qualifying. We’ve got the cars set-up for the race as well, which is good, and both drivers did a good job. Felipe did a really great job as we were not able to give him the most performance on his car due to a shortage of parts after the accident yesterday. I think without that we may have been able to get in front of Raikkonen. It’s still all to play for tomorrow. We have got a good race car, as we saw on Friday, so we’ve just got to race hard from there and get a good haul of points.

Valtteri Bottas

I think we did well today. The cloudy conditions made it a bit more tricky to get the tyres working. For me the main problem was the front tyres and getting them hot enough to grip well. That was the main issue, but otherwise the car was handling well. Obviously it was very close today so it was definitely better than the last couple of races, but it’s tomorrow that counts and the weather could affect things. Tomorrow’s the day we need to get the most out of.

Felipe Massa

It was a very competitive qualifying session, which meant we were fighting with every team for a very small gap. With the car I had today, I did a very good job and I’m really happy with my lap. If I had a similar car to Valtteri, I’d have done an ever better job. All in all, I’m pleased with the lap I did and my overall qualifying result, considering my accident yesterday.