By alley - Mar 7, 2017, 3:12 PM ET

Massa hopes Stroll suffers no more damage

Felipe Massa hopes Lance Stroll emulates his performance on the opening day of the final test to ensure Williams makes up for lost time.

Stroll endured a difficult first week of testing the 2017 car as he damaged the front wing on day two after a handful of laps, ending running prematurely. The following day was more productive until Stroll hit the wall exiting Turn 5, damaging the chassis and ruling Williams out of the final day of the first test.

Massa ensured Williams bounced back with high mileage as testing resumed on Tuesday, completing 168 laps while also setting the fastest time of the day. While the Brazilian played down how worrying the lost track time was last week, he admits Williams can't afford similar delays over the coming days.

"To be honest, always when you lose a day it's not great," Massa said. "Maybe something that we've done today we could have done last week. But we managed to do a lot more today – we managed to get some good feelings on the car, we managed to see that the car is reliable, which is very important.

"For sure, when you lose days and the car is not running for reliability issues, then all this stuff is more negative, so I don't really 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, [because it] is so easy to go off. I managed to go off once today – luckily nothing happened but we need to try to keep doing what I did today in all of these days which will be definitely great for the team."

Massa will drive for Williams again on Wednesday morning before handing over to Stroll, with the Canadian set to take the wheel for the first half of Thursday and then a full day on Friday.

Following the impressive day for Williams,

Lewis Hamilton stated he would love to see the team fighting for victories this season

. Made aware of the comments, Massa played down the likelihood of Williams being able to challenge the likes of Mercedes.

"I think we will love it a lot more than he will love it, definitely! I think we will wait and see. Mercedes has showed already amazing speed last week. Also, everything they are doing they show to be very competitive and I don't think we are on the same level as Mercedes. But I think if we can maybe be fighting for podiums it's definitely a great [result]. We need to wait and see in Australia."