Qualifying - Singapore GP report: Williams Mercedes

Felipe Massa qualified sixth and Valtteri Bottas eighth for tomorrow’s Singapore Grand Prix.

The team have been working overnight to improve the performance of the Williams Mercedes FW36 and the gap in pace has been closed relative to our closest Championship rivals.

Rob Smedley, Head of Performance Engineering

On balance we should be pleased with that performance. We are just over three tenths off of the pole sitter and amongst our closest Championship competitors, despite the fact that this is a track that doesn’t particularly suit our car. This is what we were aiming for before we got here so we have successfully completed the first part of the job. We showed good long run pace on Friday so we are in a strong position to come away from this race with a decent number of points.

Felipe Massa

This has been a promising qualifying for us because we have made big improvements compared to yesterday and we are in the mix with the teams around us in the championship. Top four may have been possible, especially considering how tight it is, but sixth is a solid result. What is really encouraging is that we identified the problem we had yesterday and the changes we made improved the car as we expected so a really good job by the team. Tomorrow will be tough. This is the longest race of the season, the conditions are challenging, and there can be safety cars so our first thought is to get both cars home in the points.

Valtteri Bottas

We made strong improvements from yesterday’s practice sessions to FP3, and we did this again going into qualifying. The mechanical set-up of the car has improved as the weekend has progressed and we have done a good job in getting the tyres into the right temperature window which we struggled with yesterday. My out-lap on my final run in Q3 was a little compromised, and I made a mistake in Turn One, so given how tight it was I could have gained more places but we need to be satisfied with where we are. We know we have the pace to fight with the cars around us so tomorrow should be an exciting race.