Williams back to pre-Austria form, says Massa

Felipe Massa believes that Williams has overcome the problems the team suffered in Austria after a strong performance on the opening day at Silverstone.

Felipe Massa, Williams FW40, Kimi Raikkonen, Ferrari SF70H

The Brazilian was ninth-fastest in Friday's opening practice session and eighth in FP2, despite a spectacular spin in the latter session.

Massa and teammate Lance Stroll were running different aero packages from the start, with a mix of new and old parts.

Matters were further complicated when both men suffered damage when they ran wide at Copse in the morning, forcing further changes to their respective set-ups.

“It was good,” said Massa. “It was not really like the other track, like in Austria. Everything was quite normal to warm up the tyres. I did my best lap on the first lap on the tyres without any problems.

"That’s definitely positive. The long run feels OK, so everything really went in a good direction, like we had before Austria.

“We started with the new package, both cars. But then I damaged my parts, and Lance damaged his parts. We are quite on the limit with the parts, so we just put back the old ones for the second session, and we should go back to the new ones tomorrow, hopefully.”

However, Massa admitted it was frustrating that the team suffered floor damage for the second Friday in a row.

“For sure the last race it was more to the track, I was coming back very slowly, and then I just took something that was outside the track which damaged the car," he said.

"This one we damaged it exactly in the same place, exit of Turn 9 [Copse], where outside of the kerb there is a little thing there where it’s quite easy to damage the car. Unfortunately it was not great.”

Massa was also the subject of an impeding investigation after he held up Max Verstappen in the closing stages of FP2, but no further action was taken.

“Actually my engineer told me was on the out lap," recalled Massa. "I had a lot of traffic in the front, so that’s what I backed off, and he was on his out lap. But then he pushed at the end to try to pass me.

"If he was on his timed lap I would not do that definitely, it was just because he was slow on his out lap, and I just held him like everybody is doing on the out lap anyway.”