Felipe Massa had a good start to the season, winning in Bahrain and Spain. However in recent races, Ferrari appear to have gone backward and Massa has blasted his Ferrari team declaring that third place behind the two McLaren’s is unacceptable. Massa is now third place in the drivers championship, 19 points behind leader Lewis Hamilton, and Ferrari are now 35 points behind McLaren in the constructors championship.
Both Massa and Raikkonen were unable to match the pace of the McLaren’s at Indianapolis – Massa finished 13 seconds behind race winner Hamilton, and Raikkonen finished 15 seconds adrift.
“We cannot be satisfied with third place,” Massa explained. “I did my best and am happy to have got on the podium but we need to work out how to improve the car to get ahead of our closest rivals. We need to work flat our on the technical development to make up the ground lost over these past three races.”
Massa does have confidence that Ferrari will turn things around though. “We are always worried,” he continued. “We don’t like to be behind. When we see our competitors in fron, you are always a bit worried. But we need to be together to improve and I trust my team. So I know we can do it. I know we have the possibilities to do it. For sure, we are not comfortable – that’s clear – but we keep working.
“We are going to work a lot these two weeks to try and improve the car, try to understand what we couldn’t make and McLaren could. I think that’s the best way to approach the next weeks – by working very hard. The constructors championship for sure is not so close compared to the drivers points but we need to keep fighting; we need to keep improving the car and I think we have a good team to do that. We had some problems in the past – we improved that there – and so we have to do the same again.”
Raikkonen is in agreement, stating that “We must improve, especially in qualifying, because our target has to be to try and win.”
