Williams are set for showdown talks after a team orders row at the Malaysian Grand Prix threatened to drive a rift between new driving partners Felipe Massa and Valtteri Bottas.

Brazil’s Massa looked set for a dressing-down after he ignored instructions to let the charging Bottas past late in the race and try to overtake McLaren’s Jenson Button.

Massa, newly arrived at Williams from Formula One big-hitters Ferrari, insisted he acted in the team’s best interests by staying in front, despite the clear orders over the team radio on Sunday.

“What I did was correct, I was trying to do the best for the team and that’s the most important thing,” he said.

“I’m sure the result wouldn’t have changed if I had let him by. What I did in my opinion was correct.”

But chief operations engineer Rod Nelson said Massa “didn’t do what we would have preferred him to do” and added that the situation would be spelled out to both drivers in the clearest possible terms.

“The facts are we felt that Valtteri stood quite a good chance of getting past Button because his tyres were about five laps younger and we felt that Felipe was compromised in that way because his tyres were a little bit older than Valtteri’s and he had a temperature problem,” Nelson said.

“There’s nothing else going on in the background. We don’t want to put one driver down and one driver up, we don’t have team orders in that respect at Williams.

“We don’t run like that – it’s not like other teams where they have a number one driver and a number two driver. We’ve got two number one drivers.”

A stony-faced Bottas, who earlier had been denied permission to overtake Massa, said he hadn’t spoken “properly” to his teammate but also hoped to get the situation straight for future races.