Zoom Like last year, Melbourne was not kind to Massa

Asked what had been the most worrying aspect about the Australian showing, Ferrari star Felipe Massa thought for a moment before providing a one word answer – “both!” Explaining in more detail, the Ferrari man added, “it was a concern that we were not the quickest car on the track and we didn’t finish the race so the reliability was also something to think about.”

As for this weekend, the weather and one other team would seem to present the most challenges. “It won’t be so easy to catch the Brawns,” admitted Massa, “but I hope we can do a good job and improve and to maybe be able to change a few things to close the gap between the Brawns and everyone else. I have no idea what effect the rain might have this weekend: it can be very good, it can be very bad, it can be a lottery, or maybe it can completely change the result of the race. Who knows?”

Failing to score points is always bad, but the Ferrari driver was keen to emphasise some positive elements from last weekend. “We didn’t finish the race for reliability reasons, which was the biggest problem on a weekend where, for most of the race I was in third place. We made a mistake in the strategy, which did not work out with the arrival of the Safety Car."

"But even allowing for that strategic matter, I was capable of staying with Lewis in the race and he ended up crossing the line in third, so who knows, I might have finished right behind him or maybe even ahead and score a good number of points. That would have been a great result, even without a win. So, using the softer tyres at the start of the race might have worked out better than it looked. It’s just that I opted for three pit stops and circumstances in the race meant this was not the best choice.”

Massa is clear about what Ferrari needs to do next. “Now we need to recover and start scoring points and restart our championship campaign in a good way, right here in Malaysia. The start to the year is similar to the one I had last year so we need to tackle the situation with the same mentality we applied to it one year ago. We need to be clever in how we tackle the strategy here in terms of the possibility of rain, the arrival of darkness during the race and any other elements.”

As for the overall level of competitiveness this weekend, the Brazilian is cautiously optimistic that it could be better than last Sunday. “We know that Albert Park can produce a very unusual race. In winter testing, we were always competitive at more 'normal' circuits like Barcelona for instance and I so I hope that here in Sepang that will also be the case. So, I’m looking forward to the weekend.”

E.A. © CAPSIS International