Williams' qualifying was a mix of fortunes, as one driver made it to Q3 while the other failed to progress from Q1.
Felipe Massa, who returns from a quick retirement, will line up on the grid in seventh for tomorrow's race. He admits that sixth would have been an ideal place to start the race, but paid homage to Romain Grosjean who will start from that position.
"It was a good qualifying session. I am happy with my qualifying and the laps I was doing. It’s the first qualifying session of the season and the first time I have used the new ultrasoft tyres, after missing some laps on those yesterday.
"All in all I was happy with qualifying. Sixth would have been a great position for us today but I think Romain did a very good lap, which I was not able to beat. That said, I am sure we can fight in the race and I’m really looking forward to making the first race of the season a good one."
On the other side of the garage, there was not a lot to cheer about as Stroll only managed P19 after some trouble in FP3, but he remains hopeful for tomorrow's race.
"The day started off tough and it was hard to recoup from that. What happened in FP3 was a little touch and it led to a lot of things. The qualifying session was in a rush and we didn’t get to do what we had planned.
"However, the team did a great job to get me out in qualifying so a big thank you to them. I think we have to forget about today, especially as our pace was much better than that, and in FP2 we were over half a second quicker than in qualifying.
"Obviously it is a long race and, played intelligently, we can do something but we will work that out tonight and see about tomorrow. I now want to put the day behind me and move on to the race, which will be interesting starting from the back."
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Shame to see Stroll down so low