Felipe Massa has said he is hopeful that the upgrades his Ferrari team are bringing to Istanbul will have a beneficial effect on the F150th Italia’s pace.
The Brazilian impressed with his mature drive in China and hopes to be able to repeat or better the showing in Turkey.
“I hope we can have an interesting step [forward],” said Massa. “In the races we have a good step compared to qualifying, so I hope we can have a good step to fight with Red Bull, which is very strong. For sure everyone is working hard to improve the car.
“It’s always difficult to say how the new parts will go. I hope we understand so many important things that makes the car stronger but we don’t know how it is going to be.”
Massa went on to say that any improvement the Maranello team make will be relative because the other teams may have made a performance gain themselves.
“We always have an idea how it is going to be with the new pieces but we don’t have an idea about the other teams or how everyone is working, especially before you try with all these new things.
“I hope we have a bigger step than the others, that is what everyone knows in F1 so we wait and see.”
Massa highlighted qualifying as an area Ferrari needed to work on coming into the Turkish Grand Prix weekend.
“I had good years [in Turkey], great cars, fighting and winning from the beginning, but we had some difficult years like 2009. It is also clear that we never give up but the difference is also quite big so we need to have our feet on the ground and to work to improve the car and I would say more in qualifying.
“In the race we showed we had a much more competitive car compared to qualifying and looking at how many points Sebastian has and the team has, it is important for sure to have a good step and to be very close to fight.”
