Here, the car counts for a lot - Massa

It is a measure of what a strong season Felipe Massa is having that third place in the last race in Monte Carlo is something to put behind him and look to do better and the Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro man is hoping to at least see the view of the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve from the prize giving stage.

"I hope I finally make it onto the podium here, where the track is very different to Monaco, in that the car counts for a lot, especially from the aerodynamic point of view and the brakes and engines are also under a lot of pressure. So, it is very different to Monaco and I hope we have a very different race also!"

Keen to return to the momentum he had prior to Monaco, as the winner of the previous two races, the Brazilian knows he has plenty to do. "The start of the season is very different for me to the one I had last year, but you have to look at each season differently," Massa said. "This time, I have made an excellent start but I am still five points behind. So we still need to work to score more points than the others."

Massa reckons that the nature of this track could help him in his quest to start winning again. "I like this track, even if there are some I enjoy more," he maintained. "But it is a good track and this race, in fact the next two races, will be very important for us running on low downforce tracks, where I think we can expect to do very well. There are not many fast places here, with only a couple of points where you hit a high top speed, with the rest of the track either slow or medium speed. You need to find the right downforce to allow you to be fast on the straights and have a good balance in the corners. As for the championship, when it is as close as this, every race can be very important. With two fairly similar races in just one week, where your car configuration is almost the same I hope I will be able to fight at the highest level in both of them.

"For this weekend I want to see us in front of McLaren and I think we have a good chance of doing that, as we have a good car. I am really motivated to achieve that over the next two weekends. In some ways, the overall track characteristic might be similar to what we had in Bahrain, so I certainly think we do not have to look at what happened in Monaco in terms of what we can expect here. We need a very efficient and competitive car and I think we are going to have that both here and in Indy."