Williams needs to avoid further accidents - Massa

The Brazilian enjoyed the most productive day of testing so far for the team on Tuesday, covering 168 laps on his way to the fastest time of the session.

Massa's programme included work that the team could not complete last week after teammate Lance Stroll crashed and damaged the chassis, forcing the team to skip the final day of running.

Massa admitted it was vital for the team to make sure it has more trouble-free days like today.

"Always when you lose a day it is not great," said Massa, who will share the care with rookie Stroll tomorrow. "Maybe something we did today we could have done last week, but it was not possible.

"But we managed to do a lot more today. We managed to get some good feelings from the car, we managed to see the car is reliable which is important.

"So, for sure when you lose days and the car is not running due to reliability issues and other stuff, it is more negative. I don't think it was that negative for us.

"We still have three days in front, we haven't got many parts, so we need to try to keep everything we can. It is so easy to go off.

"We need to try to keep doing what I did today, in all of these days. It will definitely be great for the team," he added.

Not fighting Mercedes

Massa's time was the second quickest so far in pre-season testing, only slower than Mercedes driver Valtteri Bottas' best from last week.

Although the Brazilian's time-topping effort led to Bottas' teammate Lewis Hamilton saying that it would be "amazing" to have Williams as a frontrunner this year, Massa was more cautious.

"I think we would love it a lot more than he would love! Definitely," Massa said. "But we need to wait and see. Definitely Mercedes has shown already amazing speed last week.

"I don't think we are at the same level as Mercedes, but I think if we can fight and have a great fight - maybe fighting for podiums is already a great job. So we need to wait and see in Australia."