"The days after the Spanish GP I read that
I've raised the white flag for this season," says Ferrari's
Felipe Massa. "This is not the
case and I want that to be clear. Obviously the situation in
the Championship is very very difficult and it seems to be
quite realistic saying that catching up seems to be almost
impossible, considering our gap as far as the points are
concerned. That doesn't mean that we've given up. We'll
continue working on the car and will give it our all to win
races and finish the Championship the best way possible.
We've shown last year that we're not a team that gives up
when there are negative results.
"The F60's behaviour at Barcelona was
completely different compared to the first races: it was
much more fun driving it, it was more stable and had more
grip and a higher downforce. That was a huge step forward
and it shows that we're able to improve a lot after a
difficult start. We've worked a lot and this result is
encouraging for the near future, when we'll have new
developments coming up.
"They say that a car that's doing well at
Barcelona goes well everywhere. I'm not sure if this is
true, but what I can say is that we were competitive again.
The car is not perfect - no car is - and we've still got
some problems with the hard compound, especially on the
first lap: we made a step forward, but that's still not
enough.
"The fact that we brought such a big package
of improvements to Barcelona without practically testing it
on the track means that Friday's free practice sessions were
very intense and we had to understand the effects of all
these modifications. The good news from last weekend is that
the F60 finally seems to be competitive. This is thanks to
everybody who has been working so hard at Maranello and at
the track; the bad news is that we've still got reliability
problems. Kimi had to retire and I had problems during both
of the pit stops with the fuel that didn't completely go
into the tank.
"We still have to understand what happened
there: we've tested and analysed a lot at Maranello these
days, but we haven't reached a final conclusion yet. It was
really frustrating when I had to give away two positions,
because I had to slow down to safe petrol to cross the line.
Furthermore I lost the cover of the left front wheel. That
confirms that when you have so many improvements on the
track some reliability problems might show up especially
when you don't have the test sessions we were used to in the
past.
"This is the first week, compared to the last
years, I don't have to drive the car before a race, due to
the new rules. There's still the simulator; it can't replace
the car, but it's still a good opportunity to get ready for
the next Grand Prix. During the week I'll be at the CRF in
Turin working on the race at Monte Carlo. It's true that we
had a more competitive car, but we know that this is a
completely different circuit compared to Montmelò, which can
only be compared to Singapore. Having said that I think that
the F60 will go well at Monaco, also because we'll have
numerous improvements. Considering that overtaking is almost
impossible, we have to try to find the best possible set up
for the qualifying, for the best possible position on the
grid. They say that the KERS won't help in this race; but I
think that we'll use it, also because our car's project was
born around this system. It's strange that on such a short
circuit with such small gaps the system could be decisive.
We hope that we'll make a further step ahead, the way we did
in Spain."
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