Felipe Massa had hoped for a strong showing for his final home race here at the Interlagos Circuit in Brazil and if cheers from the crowd could have pushed him across the line any faster, he would have been on pole. Sadly however, that didn’t happen and the very disappointed Brazilian driver saw himself knocked out in the second session to start 13th on the grid for Sunday’s race.
Felipe ran twice in the first session and things looked good with his second run on soft tyres putting his Williams into P8. For the second session he improved once again to sit P8 on the leaderboard. However, as other cars crossed the line, Felipe dropped into the knock-out zone and was unable to improve on his second run after suffering from understeer.
“This definitely wasn’t the greatest result because I expected to easily be fighting in Q3,” he said after the session. “The car didn’t work in the proper way and the front tyres stopped working. I was suffering from understeer and my best lap of Q2 ended up being my first one, so we need to understand what happened.”
“But it was absolutely amazing to get out of the car and feel the support from the crowd, and to feel the love I have for these people as well as the love they have for me. I’m not happy with the result for them, but I will try everything I can tomorrow to give them a better result, as well as for my team, especially as it’s my last race here in Brazil.”
