Q&A with Ferrari’s Felipe Massa

While team mate Kimi Raikkonen broke the Brawn stranglehold and stormed to P2 on the Monaco grid, Felipe Massa was stuck in traffic and left trailing in P5. Nevertheless, the Brazilian is optimistic as he sees the form of Ferrari on the rise…

Q: Felipe, how encouraging is the form that Ferrari demonstrated today, given the difficult start into the season? 
Felipe Massa: It is very encouraging for me and the team. Step by step, race by race, we prove that we are more and more competitive. That feels great. Today we’ve proved that, as we are fighting for pole. Unfortunately I was a bit caught by the traffic, but I did my best to find a good lap time. We had three timed laps. Kimi did his fastest lap on the third and I did it on the second. Kimi and I had the same time on the second lap but then Kimi managed to top the time on his third lap, without any traffic, and I couldn’t. For sure, without traffic I would have been able to fight for the top three. 

Q: How does the car feel? 
FM: Feels good - very competitive. So I don’t expect that to change tomorrow. 

Q: What about the tyres? Is this something to worry about? 
FM: I think it will not be easy to find the right solution. My guess is that some cars will start on the soft and some on the hard tyres. We will discuss our tyre strategy to try to find the best solution for how we expect the race to unfold. 

Q: You had a spin. What was the reason for that? 
FM: I had no brakes on the car.

Q: Is that good qualifying result a sign of a Ferrari recovery or just specific to this Monaco track? 
FM: Well, already last race we demonstrated that we are on the road to recovery - and this race for sure again. I think we are getting there. 

Q: A few races ago you said that you weren’t optimistic that Ferrari could fight for wins. Has that changed now that you see promising steps forward? 
FM: Our target was always to win races. That has never changed. But we clearly need to improve more to come into a position to win races.