Felipe Massa: “Kimi Was on Different Tires Than Me, And, For Sure, He Had Better Grip”
Jun 17, 2007
MODERATOR: Turning to our Ferrari driver, Felipe Massa. Third again, you probably don’t want to hear that, but it looked like a lot of pressure from Kimi at the end there, you are on slightly different tire compounds at the end of the race.
FELIPE MASSA: Yeah, it was big pressure. Kimi was on different tires than me, and, for sure, he had better grip, better track grip, as well, at the end of the race. So he was able to close very, very much the gap. But for sure you know, I did a good start, he didn’t. I could manage to make a good gap there. And then he get close, but he was after the last pit stop. So then it was good, managed to keep the car on the track, not making mistakes and just keep him behind.
MODERATOR: How do you feel about the race against McLaren Mercedes, talk us through the first few laps. Do you feel you were any closer to McLaren than perhaps in Canada or Monaco?
MASSA: I was a bit closer, but they were pulling away the gap slowly, lap by lap, making three-tenths quicker and everything, and then he was difficult for me to follow. So just create the gap, especially Lewis was going away quite quickly. And my car, I couldn’t push so much because I start to sliding around. Then I just saw them going away. So it was, for sure, quite difficult for us to beat them today. But it’s good to finish third and fourth.
Felipe, obviously the McLarens in a class of their own today. Do you feel that?
FELIPE MASSA: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. You could see that. It was difficult for me to fight with them. So especially their consistency, the pace, they were a bit in front of us. It was just difficult to fight. But third place is looking, that today was difficult, was a good position.
MODERATOR: Different tire strategy for the two of you. Do you think Kimi’s might have worked better for you?
MASSA: Yeah, because Kimi didn’t have new set of soft. So he didn’t want to start on the scrub set of soft because maybe he lose grip on the start. Then he start on the new hard, but I think looking at the start, I didn’t see, but I saw that he lose some place. So maybe it was not the right choice. But in the end of the race, he was very quick so it was very difficult for me to hold and to follow—to keep him behind because he had better tires. But, you know, it was good, too, to finish in the front.
MODERATOR: Was there a big difference between the two tires today?
MASSA: Yeah, I mean the soft was a bit more grippy, so it was better to—the degradation was not incredible higher compared to the hard. The hard was sliding around, so it was difficult to keep the rear on the ground.
MODERATOR: Do you think you can be back competitive with the McLarens?
MASSA: Well, I hope. We’re going to work, for sure, a lot these two weeks to try to improve the car, try to understand what we couldn’t make and McLaren could. So I think that’s the best way to approach the next weeks, working very hard. And the 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 improve in there, and so we have to do the same.
MODERATOR: OK, thank you very much.
