Williams admit it was a “missed opportunity” to beat Mercedes to pole in Brazil

A frustrated Williams team have admitted qualifying in Brazil was a bit of a “missed opportunity” to beat Mercedes to pole position.

Both Felipe Massa and Valtteri Bottas separated Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton in Q2 and were just fractions of a second behind after the initial runs in the top ten shootout.

However, neither driver was able to improve on their second attempt in Q3 after Massa caught traffic and Bottas made a mistake at Turn Four.

Asked if the result amounted to a missed opportunity, Deputy Team Principal Claire Williams told Sky Sports F1: “A little bit, but we came best of the rest and those Mercedes are still a little bit far away from us, but we are closing the gap. 

“So as a team I think we are really pleased and the most important thing for us now is to make sure we increase that gap to Ferrari so the guys did a great job.

“We can’t secure P3 here tomorrow so it is going to go down to those double points in Abu Dhabi so we just have to keep making sure we get as many points tomorrow and then go onto the last race of the year.”

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But despite the positives, Williams acknowledged the team felt that Massa could have sent the partisan Brazilian crowd into raptures.

“We really thought he could have separated the Mercedes cars today,” Williams confessed. “Felipe is on fire here this weekend, this is where he grew up, he is used to the circuit and he loves racing in front of his home crowd so for him to get a good result here tomorrow is really important.

“Of course we want to go in and attack and I know Felipe in front of his home crowd is going to be on a mission tomorrow. I think the fight between Lewis and Nico could be interesting tomorrow and you never know what could happen and hopefully we can be there if anything does. But we just want a really consistent race tomorrow and to get as many points as we can.”

Having been the only team to beat Mercedes to pole in 2014, Head of Vehicle Performance Rob Smedley feels his team could have repeated the feat again, but thinks fans shouldn’t lose sight of the dramatic turnaround in the team’s fortunes this year.

“I think that was quite possible,” Smedley told Ted Kravitz. 

“Everyone seemed to struggle on that last run so we will have to have a look and see what happened. Felipe was stuck in traffic, we just missed getting his car started up in the garage for technical reasons and then when he got out he was in a little bit of traffic. Valtteri was just trying to eek every little bit out of it and he went wide on the exit of Turn Four. 

“So I know it was a missed opportunity, but you can look at Hamilton or Rosberg and say that they missed opportunities – everyone has missed opportunities. I am quite tired of hearing about missed opportunities to be honest, we are not the only team who misses opportunities. I think here last year we had six points and this year we have around 195 (238) so I don’t call that a missed opportunity. So that is my rant over, happy with third and fourth.”

However, whilst his bosses may have felt he could have challenged for pole, Massa wasn’t so sure.

“I didn’t use everything I could from the car because I got a lot of traffic on my last set, because we couldn’t leave the engine on and it was a lot of trouble to leave the garage,” the Brazilian said. 

“So I left in the last moment with a lot of traffic around and I couldn’t improve my lap time and everyone was improving a little bit on the second set. I was maybe not going to improve enough to beat them, but maybe to maybe to get very close.”

Massa’s maiden F1 victory came at Interlagos in 2006 and he won the race for a second-time in 2008.