Felipe Massa

Brilliant driver on his day but is he championship material?

In 2008 he proved he was but thats only one occassion, plus that season the Ferrari TBH was a bit quicker and won more races that season. In 2009 he nearly suffered a career ending head-injury and since coming to back to the grid he hasn't really shown that promise he did in 2008.

Don't get me wrong he's a driver i very much like, but i do wonder if he'll be a title challenger again for Ferrari season in season out or if he'll stay at Ferrari much longer?

Whats your thoughts on Massa?
 
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If he does as well in 2013 as he did the last races last year, I think he will be back at the top. It's easy to forget that up until he had his accident, he was getting better and better. Even if he has to support Alonso, I doubt there will be a lot of drivers faster than him. So, in my mind anyway, 2nd rate driver only if compared with the likes of Alonso / Hamilton / Vettel.
 
Based on his latest results he would, that's why I admitted he could be 2nd rate compared to them. However he out-qualified and even out-raced Alonso in the last couple of races of 2012. In 2008 he was supposed to be 2nd driver to Raikkonen and he beat him, fair and square and was as close to winning that year's championship as Alonso was this year. Let us no forget the Finn was the defending WDC. We'll see how things unfold this year. I may need to eat my words but I'm hopeful Felipe Massa is back for good.
 
I know he beat Räikkönen, but I don't think Kimi was really bothered that season. Plus they didn't have a lot of competition that year apart from each other. If anything Hamilton should have won by a greater margin imo.
 
Josh - I don't think Massa gets enough credit for 2008, Raikkonen did OK first half of the season, Massa got his opportunity at Canada but he took it with gusto. Raikkonen is usually the one demoralising others, haven't seen him lose it like that before.
 
Maybe but then again I don't really see Kimi as a 1st rate driver but slightly below it, more like a 1.5 driver, so I still think Hamilton should have won by a greater margin. I'm not trying to take anything away from Massa though, he had an awesome season in 2008. I just think that normally it wouldn't have gone down to the wire like it did.
 
Nice to see Felipe beating Alonso in FP1 (2.5s gap last year) and being only 0.107s behind in FP2 (1.2s gap last year). Go Felipe baby!
 
Just practice, and I'm a fan of his.

Can only make proper conclusions after a race weekend.

But yeah, it looks a little encouraging.
 
The "what Massa turns up" in 2013 is something I am watching closely this season... :cheer::cheer: I hope he puts together a solid year...

I also hope that his performance isn't harmed several times by Smedley ... "Errrrmmm.... Felipe.... Fernando is faster than you .... be a good lad and miss a braking point this lap"... because if his performance is similar to late 2012 then he will be mixing it up with his team mate more often...
 
I don't believe for a second he'll be allowed to race Alonso, I'm presuming Ferrari are looking for him to be competitive against the other teams based on the car they've given him, rather than the nowhere man he was for much of last season.
 
Felipe now holds another dubious distinction in Ferrari lore. He just eclipsed Jean Alesi's mark of 67 consecutive races without a victory when he notched 68 at Oz.

Alboreto (55) and Irvine (49) are below them.

To be fair he could/should have won in Germany.
 
Also to be fair there are more races in a season than they used to be. If they'd had the same races as today Alboreto and probably Alesi would have been much higher. Although I guess Massa did miss half of 09.

He had his winless streak at the other side of his Ferrari career compared to the others.
 
There are a lot of interesting circumstances surrounding this infamous run of Massa's. And one of the most interesting to me is that he would have almost certainly been replaced by now if it wasn't a Ferrari imperative to have such a compliant number 2 driver.
 
Well yes but Ferrari have had this policy as far back as Eddie Irvine from what I can see. Irvine took lead driver role with Schumie injured but other than that season did he really do much? Rubens talks the talk now he left but wasn't he even more of a compliant number 2 than Massa has been?

Maybe rather than focusing on Massa's downfall we should think of him as a sucess for actually breaking out of the number two role for a year and a half. Yes it helped that Kimi didn't fit in and had a bit of an off period but if Massa hadn't been getting the results they wouldn't have backed him.

So maybe we should hail Massa as the number 2 who broke the mould at least for a little while. More than the likes of Rubens, Webber and Coulthard can say.
 
Massa is ahead of Alonso in the standings!!!
(and on merit as well)

Is this the first time this has been the case since they become teammaes? I can't think of another time.
 

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