Massa: the championship will get more intense from now on

For the first time this year, Felipe Massa faced the usual Thursday media scrum from the comfort of the Scuderia Ferrari mobile hospitality unit in the Catalunya paddock and the Brazilian seemed to feel the return to Europe was the sign of busy times ahead. “We only have two races in Europe, before heading off for Canada, but it does feel as though the championship will be getting more intense from now on,” he said. “The three week break since Bahrain was very important for us, for everyone at Ferrari to work hard on improving our car. I hope we will therefore benefit from having a better car from now on, starting here in Spain. This is a nice track to race on, even if we all know it very well, from having driven more kilometres here than anywhere else. But it is demanding track, where you need to have a good car if you want to perform well and apart from that, if a car is effective here, it usually means it will work well nearly everywhere.”

Of course, the main item of interest for the journalists was the level of competitiveness of the F2012, after four Grands Prix and last week’s test in Mugello. “The key in terms of how much progress we have made will not just depend on the work we have done ourselves, but on how much the other teams have done,” explained Felipe. “We are going to use here some of the parts we tried in Mugello, but not all of them and we will also try some other updates tomorrow in free practice that we did not test in Mugello. Until we have evaluated everything, it is hard to know how much of an improvement we can expect in terms of lap time, but it would be nice to think we can gain half a second. We must continue working flat out, trying to bring new parts that give us a greater step forward than the other teams. I hope we will be happier this Sunday than we have been at the last few races.”

Formula 1’s exclusive tyre supplier has come in for some criticism since the last Grand Prix, mainly from Michael Schumacher, but Massa took a different view: “I think Pirelli is doing a better job this year than last, when we had some races where the tyres did not work well. Maybe the tyre choice in Bahrain was a bit too much on the soft side, but in general I think they are working well this season so far.”

Proving that the modern F1 driver needs to be a polymath with a wide ranging knowledge, the final two questions that came Felipe’s way were in fact about football rather than Formula 1. First of all, who would he be supporting in the English Premier League finale between the two Manchester teams, United and City this weekend? “I hope Manchester City will win, I like the team, I think it is a great story, the way they have reached the top level this year. I know Mancini well and he is a great professional. And it was my engineer Rob Smedley who supports City too, who he introduced me to them.” And a further question about Italian football and his reaction to Milan’s defeat by Juventus: “I like Milan, as they had a lot of great Brazilian players for many years, but Juventus had a better championship and therefore they deserved to win the title at the end of what was a very nice competitive championship.”

An enjoyable and relaxing chat on a Thursday, the first one back in Europe, but as from tomorrow morning, Formula 1 will be the only topic on Felipe’s mind.