Felipe Massa is not particularly charismatic, he has few airs and graces and comes across as well brought-up, honest and unafraid to show his human side, something with which corporatised modern Formula One drivers have a lot of difficulty. For example, if you ask him about his wife, whom he married back home in Brazil last year, his eyes light up.
“She is like the perfect wife because she makes my life organised; I am a very unorganised man,” he said in English, in which he is fluent along with Portuguese and Italian. “The only thing I do when I sit in the car is think about racing and being quick and consistent. I don’t think about the problems I have in my private life, because I don’t have any.”
One thing that might happen is that her husband might become world champion, which would leave the Formula One purists shaking their heads in disbelief. But a combination of Massa improving by leaps and bounds, with the help of the wise counsel of Michael Schumacher, the seven-times world champion, and a woeful season from Kimi Raikkonen, his team-mate, has left the 27-year-old as Hamilton’s biggest threat.
So who is this man who has won five races this year, has been on pole four times and trails Hamilton by two points with five races to come, beginning with this weekend’s Italian Grand Prix in Monza just down the road from Milan.
A big influence in recent years has been Schumacher, who works in an advisory role with Ferrari and has become Massa’s unofficial coach. The view from inside is that the retired German driver has put steel into Massa’s racing, helping to give him a more robust and disciplined psychological approach while also advising him on the technical aspects of his craft. “He’s not really a coach - he’s like a big brother,” Massa said.
On the raging controversy over Hamilton’s demotion after winning the Belgian Grand Prix, which lifted Massa to the top of the podium and is now the subject of an appeal to the FIA, however, he has no qualms about saying what he thinks.
“My clear opinion is that Lewis was not patient,” he said of Hamilton’s overtaking of Raikkonen after cutting the Bus Stop chicane. “I know it’s very difficult to lose a victory like that, but that is part of sport and I don’t think they penalised him because they want to change the championship. They penalised him because he took an advantage.”
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