Williams’ relatively small budget compared to Ferrari’s is beginning to show according to Felipe Massa.
The Brazilian believes the Grove outfit’s budget deficit is to blame for their inability to beat Ferrari which has emerged as Mercedes’ closest rival – a position Williams held last year.
“If you have two teams that are working in the right way but one team has also double the budget it makes a difference,” he explained.
Although both budgets have remained relatively stable this season, Ferrari has overcome many of its deep-rooted problems to the extent that the teams are evenly matched, but now budgets are playing a major role in development.
“If you have a team that is struggling for different reasons then the money makes less of a difference, but if you have both working in a good way with an understanding then it’s good to have the more and more [money] you can. It’s clear.”
The British team sit third in the championship, 31 points adrift of the Italian outfit and Massa reckons that gap could grow this weekend in Bahrain.
“In Malaysia everything was related to the rear tyres and they won the race, so here is another track where the rears are a lot more important than the front, in China it was a lot related to the front tyres and they [Ferrari] still had a good pace.
“I think they proved in a different type of track that they were strong in the race, so I think we cannot stop working and stop understanding the car and trying to improve,” he added.
“But it’s also true that we are third in the championship as well, so it’s not that we are having a complete disaster at the beginning of the season, it’s not correct to say that, we just need to see if we can fight with the Ferrari because Mercedes is already far, but anyway Ferrari is not far from Mercedes.”
