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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Yeah, I was referring only to the period that Massa and Alonso have been teammates.

Massa being ahead of Alonso in the standings in 2008 is irrelevant.

I thought this was the first time Massa was ahead of him as teammates, the ninja pointed out 2010
 
Honourable mention to Felipe this weekend. Was mixing it up near the sharp end but race wrecked by punctures on two separate occasions. "NOT delamination" insists Hembery. Still sounds like unnecessary vulnerability to me though.

I can't knock his efforts but what has poor Felipe got to do to get a decent result?
 
Come now Bill, he was extremely poor.

Happily, not any more. I'm sure in 12 months there's going to be a lot of the current collective wisdom looking a bit silly too.
 
Imo Massa struggled last season with a car which was very difficult to drive. Yes, I know that Alonso managed it, but even he had to struggle. Once the car became drivable again later in the season Massa suddenly appeared to improve, could it be just that he finally had a car that suited him?
 
You could be right, but difficult or not, it wasn't hard to believe there were other drivers out there who could have done more with it. We often hear drivers say the car doesn't suit them; they're not usually that far behind.
 
Bill Boddy said:
Imo Massa struggled last season with a car which was very difficult to drive. Yes, I know that Alonso managed it, but even he had to struggle. Once the car became drivable again later in the season Massa suddenly appeared to improve, could it be just that he finally had a car that suited him?
Click to expand


I think there's more than that. Massa in fact struggled a lot more than Alonso with the handling of the car but the major change had to happen inside him. If you look at Massa’s performance, after the summer break there was a striking change. And let us remember the bigger changes introduced to the car happened at the start of the European season. : 'It is not that the car changed that much' he said, 'there was also a change from my side...You need to believe in what you can do.’ I kind of understand what Massa was going through, his position diminished within the team, no news about what would happen to him the next season and Alonso taking the car to places it didn't deserve. Massa an avid tweeter, stop doing that after a few bad races and he only started tweeting again (about racing) after Spa. You could think this was a consequence but I argue this was rather a symptom. He was not enjoying racing, he was clearly not happy and that was reflected not only on the track but everywhere else. I really don’t know if he sought psychological assistance, but Massa definitively found something within himself that was kind of lost or he wasn't aware it was there and that was triggered his transformation.
 
If Massa has been so bad in the last few seasons how come he still managed to end up on the same piece of race track as Lewis so often who is said to be so very good and who was in a much better car, and how come out of all their comings together only one of them was Massa's fault and it looked to me to be intentional out of sheer frustration from being taken out so often by Lewis....

And if he has been so bad how come he got the FIFTY order when he was clearly faster than Alonso?
 
Firstly I said Massa intentionally took out Lewis on one occasion out of frustration not the other way round. Secondly I don't give a shit about comparing points especially when you stick Lewis in the middle of them for no reason whatsoever unless you are trying to show how many points Lewis cost Massa accidentally or otherwise in 2011...

And considering he came back from an injury that nearly cost him his life in 2010 and that he is the de facto number 2 driver at Ferrari his points tally looks pretty good to me....

And he has been out qualifying Alonso for a good number of races recently and then there is the gearbox tampering to drop him down the grid in Austin to give Alonso a better chance.

Also I noticed you left out his 2008 points, I know you couldn't use his 2009 points as he spent half the year with his brain mangled....
 
I've edited to remove intentionally, apologies I misread that.

You were referring to him being supposedly poor the last few seasons hence why I've only included the last few seasons where he was poor. 2008 and this season I think he's back on form and 2009, well you've already explained that so eloquently...

I stuck Lewis in there as you talked about them being on the same part of the track so often (even though Hamilton is apparently great and Massa poor) and Alonso as they have the same car as Felipe and dicked both of them. Massa was way off both of them in points over the season.

If you read my post correctly you'll see I've said the volume of incidents or team orders doesn't come close to explaining Massa's results. He had good races of course, so does Webber sometimes, but over the course of the past 3 years he's been poor and only blaming that on Hamilton and team orders is absurd.
 

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