Massa’s season
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I am a self confessed Massa fan, and I feel that people give him a lot of stick on this site. However, as the silly season continues I thought I’d review his season. Please comment below.
Australia: 4th: out qualified Alonso and was comfortably beating him in the race. Alonso got first choice of when to pit, however, so Felipe ran a lap too much on his tyres, dropping him down the order.
Malaysia: 5th: outqualified Alonso, only front row of the season for Ferrari (so far). Made a poor start but fought back.
China: 6th: Ran 2nd until Australia all over again. First stint one lap too many, dropped down order.
Bahrain: 15th: Bad start but was comfortable in 5th before two tyre failures meant dropped down order.
Spain: 3rd: great start, ran comfortably throughout with good overtakes to take first podium of the year.
Monaco: ret: heavy crash in practise meant missed Q1, car not put back together good enough, suspension failure in race.
Canada: 8th: spin in qualifying, great comeback from back of pack.
Britain: 6th: Blinding start, 6 places made up, tyre failure, amazing comeback.
Germany: ret: outqualified Alonso, gearbox selection problem in race, strange that he had gearbox issues in race and Alonso in practise?
Hungary: 8th: lost front wing early on but coped to have a good result.
Overview: I feel that Ferrari have obviously favoured Alonso this season by pitting him first, giving him better components etc, and Massa has proven that when the weekend comes together for him, he gets a great result.
Verdict: award another 1 year contract
He should’ve been out years ago. I cringe when I read his statements about how he’s the best driver Ferrari can find and how no one would do a better job than him. Please. He’s so mediocre it’s saddening, he makes ridiculous mistakes all too often. So many times before have I read about people claiming the old Massa is back etc. but that’s usually after a race where he doesn’t make a painful mistake or isn’t so far off the pace it’s as if his mother’s in the car that day. He’s SUPPOSED to be fast and faultless, if he gets praised for doing better than terrible on a specific day (which is still far, far worse than his teammate of course) than that really says it all about his form the past few years.
I’m a through and through Ferrari fan, but I have to admit that I’m seriously heavily disappointed by Massa.
To the point that I honestly think he should be kicked out at the end of 2011, by then the team should have seen that he wasn’t the same driver anymore. After that, …well not sure, if not a “lower” team then surely DTM or WEC could be good for him.Why, or actually why the hell do Ferrari still keep him?? Their heavily in one of the most competitive sports in the world, and in 3,5 years still having that fifth wheel on the wagon! =( Grrr.
Is this because of the italian culture, something sentimental, if anyone knows??If any other driver had made as many mistakes as Massa has in the last three seasons, he’d have been out of the sport long before now.
@viscountviktor, I think your perception of the results is in the best light possible, and I have to say I’ve been disappointed with Massa this season. Some notes to your evaluation:
Australia: his race pace was not on the same level as Alonso. If it had merely been the strategy that let him down, in terms of not getting the undercut on Vettel, he should have been hounding Vettel to the podium, but I think he was some way away.
Malaysia: I don’t remember much of Massa’s race in Malaysia, but it’s probably fair to say that at that stage of the season, the Ferrari had very strong race pace, maybe even the strongest of all, yet he wasn’t even close to the light-on-fuel Mercedes, and had to inherit 5th from a retiring Button.
China: on that day, Fernando demonstrated that Ferrari had the best race pace, yet Massa finished way down in 6th. Hitting traffic after the first stop should not imply that the whole race is a write-off, except maybe in Monaco.
Canada: he fought back, but only up to 8th.
Britain: his best race of the year, finally he was going to finish ahead of Alonso in the race on merit, until his tyre blew.
To sum up Massa’s season, I think he’s had one or two good races, a couple of bad ones, and a lot of races in which he had some kind of excuse for why his Ferrari wasn’t challenging for the podium. If he was still truly worthy of his Ferrari seat, he wouldn’t need so many excuses, and we should see more drives where he gets a podium in spite of some setbacks during the race.
As for the final verdict, I think Ferrari should put another driver in the second seat. They say they don’t want to hire inexperienced drivers but why not? Because they make mistakes? Unfortunately Massa has made more mistakes than any of the rookies so far this season.
Poor poor season. Just not in the same league as the “2nd” drivers in the other top teams.
He’s just about doing better than Grosjean and Perez, but not consistently and they are rookies. He is then being out performed by both drivers in Merc, Red Bull, Lotus, Mclaren, Alonso (obviously), Hulikenburg, Bianchi, both Force India’s and probably both Torro Rosso drivers are doing better jobs than Massa.
So by my reckoning, if you were to rank the drivers on the grid based on performance during the season to date, he probably lands around 16th or so out of 22 – hardly worthy of one of the fastest 4 cars on the grid…
Ferrari don’t even have to take a rookie nowadays to improve, there’s plenty of choices that have at least 2 seasons in cars and are ready for Ferrari, Hulkenburg being the most obvious choice.
When did Ferrari ever decide rookies aren’t allowed in a Ferrari? Gilles Villeneuve was a rookie, appointed by Mr. Enzo himself.
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