Imola showed that we are strong - Massa
After Michael Schumacher met the media in the FIA press conference, it was his team-mate's turn, as Felipe Massa sat down with the journalists "at home" at the Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro media motorhome in the Nurburg paddock.
The Brazilian driver began by revealing some details of the Scuderia's testing last week. "I think we have a good tyre for this race, as a result of last week's testing," he claimed. "One of the tyres comes from pretty much the same family of compounds as the one we used in Imola, while the other is different. On top of that we learnt some interesting things and we have some new parts, including a new, slightly modified engine cover here and small modifications to the turning vanes, so combining these and other little changes, they add up to another small step forward in our development."
As to the straightforward question about what Ferrari needs to repeat its San Marino victory, Massa had an equally straightforward reply. "To win, everything has to be perfect. You can have a car that is doing what it should, but unless everything else in the package is also working to perfection, then it is not enough. Yes, you can win sometimes without the perfect package, if the car in front of you breaks, but what you need is the ability to win on merit. Car-tyres-team-strategy; a driver needs all these elements to be working well to win."
However, one win for the team does not see any let up in Massa's determination to keep pushing. "If you win a race then don't win the next, it means you have not worked well in between the two. So we have to keep up a good pace, doing a lot of work on the car, continuing to strive for good results. We must not think about what the other teams are doing. If they do not seem to make much progress, we must not relax our own programme, because for example it would only need them to get a slight tyre advantage to move forward. We must only think of our own work and try and build on the good result in Imola. At Ferrari, a win only makes everyone in the team expect another one. Imola is a good basis for us to continue at this level. We had a good car at some of the other circuits, in Bahrain and Malaysia for example, but we were not able to win there. Imola showed that we are strong now. At every race now, I expect to be able to fight with Renault on equal terms."
If Schumacher is getting bored with the questions about his future, Massa could also be forgiven for finding it tedious to deal with the same issue as to how the team's future driver choices affect him. "They don't" he maintains. "I am confident about my future, as long as I keep working hard with the team and pushing all the time, so all these rumours mean absolutely nothing to me."
