Felipe Massa has been in England for two days already, as he was in London on Wednesday attending an event on behalf of team partner Shell and on Thursday afternoon, it was the turn of the world’s media to hear what he had to say, starting with his assessment of Scuderia Ferrari’s chances in Sunday’s British Grand Prix. “I am optimistic about this weekend as I believe our car can be very competitive and I don’t think our performance in Turkey reflected what we were capable of,” said the Brazilian. “We understood the problem we had there and so we can run the car better and have a better car here.”

Although temperatures in London on Wednesday were up in the 20s, it has been a cold day at this open and windy former airfield circuit and Felipe agreed that warmer conditions would be better once the cars start running tomorrow. “If it’s cold, it will be a problem for everybody, especially getting the hard tyre to work. But despite the weather, I do like this circuit. How I feel about this being the last time we come here depends on what replaces it. If it’s a great track, then we won’t miss Silverstone so much, but if the new venue is not so good to race on, then that situation would be different. But I appreciate how important this race is for the fans here. I’ve been following everything that has been going on regarding the future of the sport and I fully support my team and whatever they decide to do, I will be a Ferrari driver.

Massa was asked how it could be that a “small” team like Brawn could beat the established front runners, so the Ferrari man began by correcting the journalist’s facts! “First of all, Brawn is not a small team as the development of their current car is down to all the work they did when they were Honda and had a lot of money,” he explained. “It’s not as though they started from zero. In fact, they started very early building this car with a big budget. Secondly, the rule changes have had a big impact, especially on two big teams like Ferrari and McLaren who, right to the end of last year were using plenty of their resources on developing the ’08 car in the battle for that year’s championship. But now we have made a big step forward since the start of the year and we are doing a very good job of developing the car. However, right from the beginning of the season, the performance gap to the front guys was too big. Despite this, my aim is to try and win as many races as possible, or to finish as high up as possible: what else can you do? Sitting on the floor and crying will not change anything. We have to work and that is what we have been doing and will continue to do to see how it will end. When you start a race weekend and you feel you do not have a car that can win, but then after the race, you feel you have taken one hundred percent out of it, finishing as high up as you can, you can be happy knowing you have done everything you could. Of course, it is frustrating, but we are professional, we know what we can do and we know that the results will come from the work we put in. I believe our car does have the potential to win races this season.”

In recent weeks, Felipe has been vocal in his support of the Scuderia in its and the other teams’ discussions with the FIA over the future of the sport, but today he was brief and to the point: “I’ve been following everything that has been going on regarding the future of the sport and I fully support my team and whatever they decide to do, I will be a Ferrari driver.”