{"id":21319,"date":"2014-03-20T07:22:53","date_gmt":"2014-03-20T11:22:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/?p=21319"},"modified":"2014-03-24T21:58:16","modified_gmt":"2014-03-25T01:58:16","slug":"williams-still-second-best-after-mercedes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/formula-1\/williams-still-second-best-after-mercedes\/","title":{"rendered":"Williams still second best after Mercedes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Williams remains one of the top favourites in 2014, despite the events in Melbourne.<\/p>\n<p>Piloted by Felipe Massa and Valtteri Bottas, the new Mercedes-powered FW36 was a standout of the winter season, but it struggled in the wet qualifying session last weekend.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"ngg-singlepic ngg-left alignleft\" style=\"margin: 5px 10px;\" alt=\"Felipe-Massa-2\" src=\"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/gallery\/f1-2014-rif-images\/f1-2014-drivers\/Felipe-Massa-2.jpg\" width=\"384\" height=\"256\" \/>In the race, Massa was punted out at the first corner while Bottas finished sixth, fighting through the pack after hitting the wall and damaging his wheel.<\/p>\n<p>Pat Symonds says the Finn should thank former team driver Pastor Maldonado for the robustness of the car&#8217;s suspension.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Our suspension is very strong,&#8221; Williams&#8217; technical boss told Auto Motor und Sport.\u00a0 &#8220;Pastor pushed the limits very often in the past and that probably had an influence on the design.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Symonds said that if Massa and Bottas had clean races, they would have set their sights on the podium.<\/p>\n<p>Former F1 driver Mika Salo told the Finnish broadcaster MTV3: &#8220;Williams&#8217; car is the second fastest after Mercedes.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>According to Turun Sanomat newspaper, Mercedes chief Toto Wolff agrees: &#8220;If their weekend had gone normally, most likely they would have been driving for the podium.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Asked if Williams can now challenge every single team except Mercedes, Symonds insisted: &#8220;I want to beat Mercedes as well.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Our view is that Mercedes is at the front, and then there is a group of cars and we feel that in optimal conditions, we are narrowly at the front of that group.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #888888;\"><em>\u00a9 RIF | GMM<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Williams remains one of the top favourites in 2014, despite the events in Melbourne. Piloted by Felipe Massa and Valtteri Bottas, the new Mercedes-powered FW36 was a standout of the winter season, but it struggled in the wet qualifying session last weekend. In the race, Massa was punted out at the first corner while Bottas &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[3],"tags":[5262,130,5340,4839,104,276,538,595],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21319"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21319"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21319\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21356,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21319\/revisions\/21356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}