Monaco is Monaco - Massa
With practice starting on Thursday at the Monaco Grand Prix weekend, the usual FIA press conference took place today, Wednesday, at the Principality and Scuderia Ferrari driver Felipe Massa was one of those who got the call.
“Starting ninth and finishing sixth is not too bad a result,” began Massa, when asked to look back at last Sunday’s Spanish Grand Prix. “Lack of grip was my major problem, so I hope we have a better weekend here, as we will be using the softer tyres that suit me better, the ones I was competitive with in Bahrain.
“Monaco is Monaco and this is a unique track where the driver is always a more important factor than usual, so let’s wait and see.” There had been talk of splitting Monaco qualifying on Saturday afternoon, as this year, there will be twenty four cars trying to set a fast lap in Q1. “It’s never nice if you cannot get a clean lap and that is usually a problem at this circuit,” explained the Ferrari man. “It would have been nice to try and do something different so that everyone gets a better chance of a “real” lap, but the decision has been taken not to change anything, so we will just have to do our best.”
Some of the media were under the impression that Massa did not like using the new system for managing the “blown” rear wing, tried for the first time in Spain. “That is not correct,” specified the Brazilian. “Along with other updates it helped improve the performance of the car. The reason we will not use it here is that on such a slow track it brings no advantage and it is better to have maximum downforce at all times, but for sure it will be used again at other circuits.”
As for his own difficulties with lack of grip in the past few races, Felipe explained that he and the team were working hard to solve it. “In winter testing and in the first race, I was completely happy with the car,” he said. “It was the way I wanted it, but then as we used different tyres I struggled and it probably cost me some points in the past few races. We have looked carefully at all the data from last week in Barcelona to see how we can improve the situation.”
Source: Ferrari
