Following what appeared to be a promising weekend for Williams, with the team recording their best qualifying in a very, very long time, turned into a nightmare as star driver Felipe Massa was involved in a last-lap smash with Force India’s Sergio Perez which cost both a possible fourth place.
Massa suffered a knock that was 27 times the force of gravity which sent both drivers to hospital for precautionary checks. The Brazilian has since taken to Instagram to express his view on the incident, where Perez went off the normal racing line and drove into the side of the Williams driver, launching both across the circuit and into the barrier, narrowly hitting Sebastian Vettel in third place.
The race however will be remembered as a race that arguably Williams should have won, as Mercedes hit major trouble on the very demanding Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, Valtteri Bottas had a poor race and Massa failed to overtake slower cars quickly enough to stand a chance of catching eventual race winner Daniel Ricciardo of Red Bull.
No. 19 Felipe Massa (BRA)
Q: P5
R: P12 – Crashed out on lap 70 but classified
Looked absolutely mighty on Friday and Saturday morning before being pipped by both Bottas and surprisingly Sebastian Vettel in Q3 (0.04 seconds separated the two Red Bulls and the two Williams) but Massa looked as if he had the best race pace out of the non-Mercedes cars, some like Christian Horner of Red Bull even felt that he could have challenged Mercedes on outright pace. However, it wasn’t to be. Having messed about with strategy early on, attempting a one-stop failed and a two-stop was forced. Massa found himself then in a train of cars that consisted of the wounded Mercedes of Nico Rosberg, the two Red Bulls and Perez. He was lining up a pass on Perez going into the kink before turn 1 when Perez failed to keep to the racing line, darted left and took both out in a silly manoeuvre, earning nothing but a five-place grid drop. However, Massa’s inability to pass these cars earlier arguably cost him the race win, something he still hasn’t achieved since that dramatic finale in 2008.
No. 77 Valtteri Bottas
Q: P4
R: P7
Another strong qualifying saw him pip Massa who looked quicker all weekend. He was running strong early on but had to pit early due to wearing his tyres out, and seemed to not quite have the pace to keep up with the front of the pack in the end. He also had overheating issues which cost him performance. He was running ninth before the events of the final lap. He will hope for a stronger race pace in Austria, a circuit he is yet to drive in anger.
Williams should do well in Austria, as it’s a circuit similar to Canada, just with more extreme elevation change and perhaps cooler conditions. They’ve only won there once in its current configuration, with Jacques Villeneuve in 1997, but as we have just seen, Mercedes are not invincible. Other teams can win and score podiums, so should these issues reoccur, Williams must be ready to pounce. Six points from Montreal can only be seen as an absolute disaster for Williams, where main rivals McLaren and Force India picked up 14 and 10 points respectively. They cannot afford to drop many more vital points on circuits where they should be strong.
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