A speacial feeling

 

“It was a great day for the team, with a super result in our home race. I got a good start and maybe I might have made up a place, but I did not have good traction coming out of the second corner. Then I felt a knock and it was Hamilton who had hit into the side of my car: fortunately no damage was done. All race long the car worked very well and I was always competitive. The pit stop was not perfect and maybe the time lost there cost me second place. All the same, it was really nice to be on the podium: seeing all the people underneath it was incredible, with the whole straight packed with fans. It was a special feeling, especially as I feel I am part Italian. I am happy for the team and for our home crowd. Now there is much work ahead of us to prepare for the coming races, starting with Singapore. It won’t be easy, but we are up for it. Personally, I will continue to fight for the wins and for the good of the team.”

Friday

Sep.10 (Ferrari) The sun shone on the first day of practice for the eighty first running of the Italian Grand Prix, the sixty first to count towards the Formula 1 World Championship.
Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro’s weekend got off to a busy start with a packed work schedule, on track and in the garage. Felipe Massa and Fernando Alonso completed a total of almost a hundred laps at the wheel of their F10s, the Spaniard doing 56 and the Brazilian reaching 42, before having to miss out on the last run planned, because of damage sustained after he went off at the Parabolica.
“My heart missed a beat when Felipe ended up in the gravel,” commented Stefano Domenicali. “It was lucky he did not end up in the barrier, as his car was going pretty quickly at the time. It was a shame, as he was improving his lap time, even if we know that Friday times count for little or nothing. The important thing is that we acquired a substantial amount of data which we will now use to prepare our cars as well as possible. This is an important event for us, both because it is our home race and because we are all aware of the situation in both championships. We will try and do the maximum, for ourselves and for our fans, although we know we are up against stiff opposition.”

Felipe Massa: “At the end of the second session, I tried to copy Kimi and do a bit of rallying… Joking apart, I was really lucky when I went off the track. I was heading for my best time, when I found myself in Michael’s wake at the Parabolica and went off: I kept the accelerator pressed down in the hope I would manage to avoid hitting the barrier and I managed it, so I came straight back to the pits. Unfortunately, the car was slightly damaged, so I had to miss out on the final part of our programme. However, overall, it has been a good day in which we constantly improved. We had a lot of work to get through and at the start we struggled a bit, but then we found a good set-up and in the end I was reasonably happy with my car. We learned a lot about the handling of the F10 and now we have plenty of data to analyse to prepare as well as possible for what is such an important event, this being the Scuderia’s home race.”

Ferrari set to escape further penalties

Ferrari looks set to escape further sanction over its alleged deployment of team orders in the German Grand Prix.
The team was fined $100,000 by the Hockenheim race stewards and referred to the FIA World Motor Sport Council after Felipe Massa slowed and allowed Fernando Alonso to pass him for the lead - with the Spaniard going on to take a win that resurrected his title bid.
The WMSC hearing over the matter took place in Paris today, but Angelo Sticchi Damiani, head of Italian motorsport federation the CSAI, told reporters outside that the governing body had agreed unanimously not to impose any extra punishment, according to the Reuters news agency.
Team orders have been banned in Formula 1 since the outcry over Ferrari's handling of the 2002 Austrian Grand Prix, when Rubens Barrichello handed victory to team-mate Michael Schumacher within sight of the chequered flag - even though the German already had a comfortable lead.
Suspicions were aroused at Hockenheim when Ferrari informed Massa over the radio that Alonso was "faster" than him, and then asked if he "understood" the message. Shortly afterwards, the Brazilian relinquished the lead and was subsequently thanked by his engineer Rob Smedley, who also said "sorry" in the same radio transmission.
Ferrari argued that it was Massa's own choice to cede the lead, and that it had simply presented the situation to him over the radio. Alonso had been the quicker of the Ferrari drivers for much of the weekend, but was passed by his team-mate at the start.
http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/86478

Ferrari Days In Budapest

Felipe Massa's Blog - "Spa – more difficult than we expected"

 

After the summer break, it was nice to be back “at work” racing at the fantastic Spa circuit and the weekend started in a nice way when nearly all the drivers attended a small party to celebrate my friend Rubens Barrichello’s three hundredth Grand Prix. To be honest, I don’t think I will ever match this statistic, as I reckon I will stop racing before that landmark figure. But I am pleased for him, as it is a very nice statistic, and it is a great achievement in a successful career.

Looking back a couple of days to the Belgian Grand Prix, I started sixth and finished fourth, so at a certain level, I could say that I had a good race. However, in terms of the result and in terms of the championship and the points total for Ferrari, it was not enough. Given the difficult conditions, with the weather changing several times during the race, this was a positive performance in difficult conditions. However it was not what I expected, or what the team had hoped for, given the fact that in Spa, the car was not as competitive as it had been in the two previous races in Hungary and Germany. This was probably another example of how, this year, the situation in terms of which teams are competitive, has been governed by the nature of the track. On Friday, we had looked very strong, while we were less so on Saturday and Sunday, so maybe our competitors did not show their full potential on the first day. This meant the whole weekend was more difficult than we expected. On Sunday, the changing conditions meant that just staying on the track was quite difficult and given how easy it was to make a mistake, I was pleased with my performance, even if I had a solitary race, never really being able to challenge those ahead, while I did not have much pressure from behind.

On Sunday I will be returning to the Hungaroring, for a Ferrari Racing Days event, where I will be doing some demonstration laps in a Formula 1 car, the 2008 model, which for obvious reasons definitely has some special memories for me. Today I am Maranello, where I had meetings with my engineers and also did a session on our simulator, in preparation for the next round, the team’s home Grand Prix at Monza. That will be a great event, racing in front of our tifosi, but the reality is that it will be a very important race, because after the less that satisfactory performance in Belgium, the championship is not looking so easy for us. We need to keep pushing for the last six races, trying to be back in the fight for wins or at least as many podiums as possible. For sure it won’t be easy.

Belgian GP - Sunday - Quote

Felipe Massa (4th): “I think this is a positive result and, given the way the race went and the accidents that put Vettel and Button out of the game, we can even say we were a bit lucky. This weekend, Red Bull and McLaren were stronger than us, but we worked well as a team, making the right choices before and during the race. Our set-up was a bit more efficient in the dry, while we suffered a bit in the wet, especially in the middle sector, while in the first two we were reasonably competitive. Now we go to Monza, for our home race: we hope to do well at a track where speed and stability under braking count for a lot. We will continue to fight right to the end, even if the situation in the championship is ever more compromised.”