F1: Williams concedes that Ferrari is ahead
Williams had been expected to be battling closely with Ferrari in the chase of Mercedes in 2015, but in Malaysia the cars finished over 70 seconds behind winner Sebastian Vettel – and were also well beaten by Kimi Raikkonen, who dropped to the back after his early puncture.
Valtteri Bottas and Felipe Massa both concede that the team has a lot of work to do to catch up.
“We just need to now really look at everything,” said the Finn. “Because it seems that they've made much more progress than us from the last race, so we really need to keep pushing if we want to fight with them. But at the moment they are quite a lot quicker. So plenty of work to do.”
“We finished in the best position we're supposed to finish for the team,” said Massa. “That's what counts for us, but it's true the guys in front were a little bit too quick and too consistent on the tires compared to us. I think they did a fantastic job and an incredible work.
“They improved more. They already had a better car in the last race, maybe we just managed to start in the front, but they had a better car than us. Here they had a much better car in the race. Especially we used the tires too much compared to them, and that was a big player in the race. It was a great race, nobody expected Sebastian to win here. Maybe Fernando is not so happy, but it's like that! We've tried everything we could, and we'll try even more. We're pushing and we're working.”