Felipe Massa, now heading into his seventh Formula 1 race with the Williams Racing team, has admitted that expects better results from his performance going forward from the Canadian Grand Prix.
Having finished in seventh place three times this season, Massa has helped his Williams team tie McLaren in the Constructors Championship with 52 points after six races this season. With fourth place being Massa’s strongest ever finish in Montreal, Massa was questioned whether this was in line with his expectations of the year thus far during Thursdays’ driver press conference. Massa was quick to set his expectations straight:
“No. Definitely I think I didn’t have great results until now. It should be much better than what I had until now. So I had not very great races, starting with the race, where I didn’t get to corner two and you know in Bahrain I was fighting for third, fourth the whole race and then I lost a lot of positions because of the safety car.”
“So I think it was not very great results but I’m sure we can do much better and I hope this track can be also a bit better for our car compared to Monaco, compared to other tracks. So really looking forward that we can have a lot better results, starting here in Montreal, a lot better than seventh I hope.”
Williams’ season so far has put them in a unique position – they are scoring regular points again whilst managing to compete with the mid-field as the team continues to aim higher and return to the front of the grid in future races and seasons.
Along with a rebranding of the team and a focus on competing, credit can also be given to Rob Smedley, who moved from Ferrari to continue his work alongside Massa with Williams Racing, who Massa credits with bringing fresh direction and experience to the team when it comes to engineering:
“[Rob Smedley brings] A lot of experience. A lot of good direction, different things in terms of how to work, you know, in many different areas. I think he’s a very intelligent engineer, has a lot of experience. For sure, things don’t change from one day to the other, so it takes a little bit of time but not just him, we have a lot of great engineers, a lot of good people and things are getting better all the time inside the team and I’m really looking forward that from now until the end of the of the championship things will get better and better all the time.”
Tied for sixth place with McLaren and just 15 points behind fourth placed Sahara Force India, Williams could find themselves pushing for a finish towards the top of the Constructors’ Championship table before the season is out.