The Brazilian, fresh from victory in Valencia, will line up alongside his chief title rival for the second race in a row on Sunday, but despite lying only a few tenths of a second behind his counterpart and potentially carrying a few laps more fuel Massa insists that the silver cars still hold a performance advantage.
“We saw that the McLaren pace in qualifying was pretty strong, but anyway, I did a great job, a great lap,” Friday’s pace-setter explained.
“I couldn’t manage to get everything out of the car like Lewis just mentioned. I did a perfect lap but it was not enough. We missed a little bit of speed which would have put us in front of them.”
“For sure, we need to look at the strategy first to have a clear picture but if you look at all three qualifying sessions they were pretty strong, so I guess they have a very strong pace here at this track.”
“But you never know, the race is long, I think we can have a very good race pace to fight with these guys. It was very difficult to be in front of both McLarens but at least I was in front of one and we will see tomorrow how it’s going to be.”