Bad timing puts Williams 17th an 18th on grid
Williams' Valtteri Bottas finished 17th and Felipe Massa 18th in a weather affected qualifying session at Silverstone. As teams changed from the intermediate tyre to dry weather tyres, the rain started to fall again leaving both drivers in the drop zone and exiting at the end of Q1.
Rob Smedley, Head of Performance Engineering: "We have a good car so it's very disappointing to be in 17th and 18th. We were trying to mark the people on track but our timings were wrong. We didn't see the rain coming as quickly as it did, but that's not an excuse, it's an error which we can't make again. How we recover tomorrow is important now and getting into the points is still our goal, as we have the car for it and we need to try and get as many points as we can over our closest championship rivals."
Valtteri Bottas: "The whole session was unbelievable. We left it too late to go out on the dry tyre so we didn't get the run in as it started to rain again. Truthfully we were unlucky it started to rain. We had the pace to get to Q3 so we missed a good opportunity. It's a long race tomorrow and we have a good car so we can still get back into the points, but again the weather will play its part."
Felipe Massa: "It was really a missed opportunity to get the car in a good position for tomorrow. We didn't expect the rain and the track was drying so we had to get the lap in. The moment it started raining again, that was it, it was over. We have a lot to do tomorrow and it will not be easy but the car is quicker than where we are."
