A dark day for Williams

Williams Racing faced a difficult first day of testing at the Belgian GP at Spa-Francorchamps. Felipe Massa notably destroyed his FW40 by going off the track during the first practice session. The damage was severe enough that the team was forced to change the chassis, leaving the Brazilian on foot for the afternoon.

“This is a session to forget for me, recognizes Felipe Massa who was only able to complete a few installation laps. I had a lot of oversteer in turn 7 after hitting the inside curb. It was my fault and I feel really disappointed that I was only able to complete one lap today. It's not positive for the weekend because it's difficult to understand the car by missing two sessions. We're going to start from scratch tomorrow. »

“It wasn't the best Friday of the year, confirms Paddy Lowe, Williams technical director. Felipe's car suffered heavy damage to the left side, particularly to the chassis which we were unable to repair. This is a big lack of time in our program which included element testing, especially since Felipe missed the race in Hungary. »

Lance stroll was also in trouble. The Canadian finished the second session in 17th position, more than 3 seconds behind the benchmark achieved by Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes).

“This is not the situation we wanted, recognizes Lance Stroll. We just have trouble getting speed in the corners. We need to improve in the high-speed corners because we still have the problems we encountered at Silverstone (Great Britain) and Austria. »

“The first session was pretty good for Lance where we focused on aero. We were only able to operate with a low fuel car before the rain came and we had traffic when it was on ultra soft tyres,” shade Paddy Lowe.`

Williams' day ended with a sanction from the stewards who fined the Grove team €10 for using non-compliant tires on Lance Stroll's FW000 during the first practice session. .