Felipe Massa: a class act
Parallel to Lewis Hamilton’s moment of joy was utter despair for title runner-up Felipe Massa.
Massa crossed the line at the end of the Brazilian Grand Prix thinking he had won the world championship. The home crowd and his Ferrari team thought so too – but when Hamilton came home in fifth place the smiles vanished.
Massa drove a faultless race in Brazil. He started from pole position, he set fastest lap, and he won the race. And for all the talk of his weaknesses in wet weather he kept his head during the showers at the start and end of the race.
He couldn’t have done any more, and he was powerless to prevent Hamilton beating him to the championship by a single point.
I won’t pretend for a moment that I am anything other than relieved that the title contenders didn’t end the race tied on points, as it looked like they were going to as the last lap began. That would have given Massa the title – with six wins to Hamilton’s five – and a hard-earned championship would have been forever tainted by the disgrace of the Spa penalty. As far as I’m concerned, the sport dodged an undesirable and disreputable outcome, just as it did in 1982.
But I felt bitterly sorry for Massa at the end. Since Bahrain this year he has forced his critics to re-evaluate their opinions of him with every passing race. He comes across as a genuine and warm individual – and his emotions are invariably writ large across his face.
He was the model of graciousness in defeat. Afterwards he said:
We need to congratulate Lewis as he did a great championship, he scored more points than us so he deserves to be champion. I know how to lose, I know how to win and it is another day of my life where I will learn a lot.
Hopefully we come back here with the title [next year], but it is part of our experience and part of our life.
And I don’t buy all this ‘that was Massa’s only shot at the title’ stuff either. He’ll win more races in the future. And people like me will look a lot less surprised when he does.
Robert McKay said on 3rd November 2008, 9:29
Of course, the guys only been around two seasons and had two championship deciders already. Give it a break man.
If he’s winning championships or just narrowly losing them and he’s still very inexperienced, then that makes me think there will definitely be more to come as he gets better. It’s clear Hamilton is not the finished article – but he was still the better driver.
Anyway to go back to the main point – yes, Massa lost with real dignity and grace and should be congratulated for it. It’ll be interesting to see how he bounces back from this in terms of the battle for supremacy at Ferrari.
Patrickl said on 3rd November 2008, 9:47
I don’t get the “Massa is so much better now” stuff. Massa did worse this year than he did in 2007 and this year his car was actually a lot more competitive with the McLaren than it was in 2007.
The thing is, Massa did less worse than his competitors. The fact is that this year the guys in the top teams have underperformed so incredibly.
Raikkonen failed miserably mid season. 3 poor races after a wrong turn in car development, then a failed engine and then 3 races were Raikkonen tries to make up a little too hard and crashes.
Hamilton’s long list of errors was summed up already, but he also had to content himself with a car that was slower than the Ferrari through the biggest part of the season.
Don’t even get me started on Kovalainen.
Overall Massa was at best least worse of the top team drivers, but in the end Hamilton was one point “less worse”.
I do have to say that Interlagos was the first time that Massa actually impressed me. His other wins were these “get the pole on a circuit where no one can pass and everybody just drives the laps till the race ends”. They were sometimes called “dominant wins” even though the next car was right behind him through the entire race. Just couldn’t get passed, because it’s impossible to overtake and there isn’t much to gain in points anyway.
I do think this is Massa’s last chance, because I don’t think Raikkonen will make this mistake again. After Raikkonen stops, either Vettel or Alonso will join Ferrari and then I’d really say it’s all over for Massa.
Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine) said on 3rd November 2008, 10:22
Reagen –
Hamilton played it conservative – that’s exactly what he was supposed to do.
It was Glock’s gamble to stay on dry weather tyres. The gamble didn’t pay off. Really it has nothing to do with Hamilton, and to say Hamilton doesn’t deserve the title because of is to miss the point. I think Massa’s taking it better than you are.
Lustigson & Patrickl – I’ll be covering all that in the post-season driver rankings – more here: 2008 F1 driver rankings
Lustigson said on 3rd November 2008, 10:24
@ Keith
Looking forward to it. :)
Jean said on 3rd November 2008, 10:40
Keith , Glocks pace in the last lap has me really puzzled. Do you have a comparison of his lap time to someone else still running on dry tyres on the last lap ?
Reagan said on 3rd November 2008, 10:45
As i have said before this is the first and the last title for Hamilton….This year he got the title by a fluke. Mark my words and read it next year.
Lustigson said on 3rd November 2008, 10:45
@ Jean
Check out this post on the Autosport.com forum. I haven’t bothered to read the whole thread, though, so there may be more information.
Explosiva said on 3rd November 2008, 11:13
A gracious loser? Yes. A class act? No. A real class act would’ve disavowed – even rebuked – the crowd’s reaction at the end. Shame Lewis had to celebrate amidst all the boos…although I’m sure he didn’t care at all. Massa simply acknowledged what happened – that he lost a closely fought championship. Nothing more.
Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine) said on 3rd November 2008, 11:14
Jean – Yes: Championship changes hands twice in the final three laps (Video). Lustigson’s link as a good ‘un too, and I’ll do the usual post-race analysis article later as well.
John Spencer said on 3rd November 2008, 11:39
It’s funny – and I’m not referring to any of the comments above – but it always seems to be the same people who say firstly that Massa has improved enormously this year and secondly that this is his last chance for the championship. It sure can’t be both. The problem for assessing a driver’s ability is separating his talent from the performance of his car, which you can only really do by comparing team mates. Here Massa looks good, because he’s done much better with Ferrari over the course of the season than his team mate. But is it because Kimi has had a problem, or because Massa has driven better?
You can still level the same criticisms at Felipe – some fantastic qualifying performances, and great wins from the front row, but otherwise fails to shine. But there’s not a huge difference from last year. I think he was 11-6 in qualy against Kimi in 2008, compared to 9-8 last year. And if you strip out abnormal qualifying (when either of them is outside the top 10 for mechanical or other problems), then on average Massa has qualified 0.33 of a place ahead of Kimi at races in 2008, compared to 0.69 of a place in 2007.
In fact, Massa scored 97 points this year compared to 94 points last year – so he’s Mr Consistent, while Kimi dropped from 110 to 75. Is this all down to the ugly Ferrari engine cover? I have no idea, but even if Kimi is back up to speed next year, we can confidently forecast a few Massa poles and wins (assuming of course, that Ferrari is still the car to be in).
It sometime seems that Formula 1 has a memory that lasts no more than one race, but Felipe is still haunted by his early career, where he was out pointed by Heidfeld and Fisichella at Sauber, before being out pointed by Schumacher and Raikkonnen (2007) at Ferrari. The only team mate of whom he unequivocally had the measure was Jacques Villeneuve, back in 2005.
Felipe needs to maintain his form in 2009 against the possibly resurgent Kimi, or he runs the risk of being filed in the drawer marked ‘good number 2′ alongside DC and Rubens.
qazuhb said on 3rd November 2008, 11:58
What do you think Kubica unlapping himself to gain nothing and putting Hamilton’s title in jeopardy? Was he trying to help Massa, he didn’t realize or he just didn’t care?
Rob R. said on 3rd November 2008, 12:20
Lewis Hamilton is lucky. The Spa incident worked to his advantage. If the stewards had been awake, they would have given him a drive-through penalty immediately and Kimi Raikkonen would have been able to colledt his wits, come in and change to dry tyres, win the race, and then who knows what would have happened if Raikkonen had the motivation from that win. Maybe it would have been a three way fight yesterday.
And in Japan, Lewis made a joke out of F1 at the first corner with that stunt he pulled. If you can watch the video of that start, and tell me you’re not embarrassed to see all those cars being punted off the track (Raikkonen, his own team mate Kovalainen, and others) like it was a bunch of kids playing a videogame instead of the world’s “premier” motorsport, well…. clearly more of a Lewis fan than you are an F1 fan.
The wrong world champion.
stevepCambsUK said on 3rd November 2008, 12:24
Massa was world champion for 21 seconds……
http://extras.timesonline.co.uk/pdfs/hamiltonchampion.pdf
this explains what happened in every detail for the last 3 laps
Mr Soap said on 3rd November 2008, 12:32
Quite how Hamilton punted off people behind him is left unexplained though…
Lustigson said on 3rd November 2008, 14:51
@ Rob R.
I wouldn’t say that, but my view of Hamilton isn’t through pink glasses, as we say in my country. B)