- Williams
No-one will catch Mercedes - Massa
Felipe Massa does not think anyone can catch up with Mercedes this year.
Mercedes has won the first four races by more than 20 seconds from its nearest rival and heads to the Spanish Grand Prix as favourites. Massa's Williams has been in the running for top six finishes this year but has failed to score the points to reflect its potential. However, he does not think any of Mercedes' rivals will get close to matching its cars on outright pace.
"I don't think so. In my experience, normally from the first race to the last race there has been improvement of 1.5s, and in a year like this there can be bigger improvement compared to the last. If the others grew 1.5s it would still not be enough to catch Mercedes, because they will improve as well. Even if Mercedes only improve 0.5s, they still have a car to win the last race [of the season]."
All teams will bring upgrades to this weekend's Spanish Grand Prix and Massa believes that may cancel out the improvements his team has found since the last race.
"We have some new parts in the car, it's not something that will completely change the car but it is important to keep developing the car. I hope we can have a step forwards, but it's also true that the other teams will as well. Sometimes it's difficult to say we will improve our car because we didn't see it on the track, but that's because there are improvements from everybody. We need to keep growing as well and that is what we are working for."
However, Massa is confident the updates will improve the car after a season of struggling to get new parts to work at Ferrari last year.
"100%. Last year I don't remember one race where we brought a new part and it worked. And we had a lot of new parts and at most of the races it never worked and we removed it on Friday evening.
"The work we have been doing at Williams with new parts, the only thing which we couldn't use yet was a bigger rear wing that wasn't working at the first race. We keep trying to use it, but that's the only thing, everything thing else we brought is in the car. I am really 100% sure that the new parts here will work and the new parts at the next race and every other race should work."
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