Felipe Massa blames poor showing on F2012 – Formula 1 news
Felipe Massa has blamed his poor showing at the opening race of the season in Australia on the complex Ferrari F2012.
Ferrari’s new car has been struggling since the first pre-season test and unlike his teammate Fernando Alonso, he has never looked in control of the car.
Massa started the race placed 16th on the grid and did well to move up to ninth in the initial laps of the race but then slipped down to 13th as the race went on. During the race, an incident occurred that is being looked into by the stewards where Massa
was in a tangle with Bruno Senna in the Williams which caused damage to the car and caused both the drivers to retire.
Massa was criticised by the commentators over his driving and one of them pointed out that “he(Massa) has never looked the same since his accident in 2009.” The added pressure from the president Luca di Montezemolo will only add to the Brazilians woes as
he continues to disappoint.
“This has been a really poor weekend for me,” Massa admitted. “Already yesterday I suffered because the car was badly balanced and today, it was probably even worse, because after a few laps I was struggling with the tyres. I had got a great start and had
managed to make up a few places and I was hoping to finish in the points.”
“We tried to bring forward the first stop, but also on the second set of soft tyres we had the same problems: the car was sliding and the degradation was much greater than for the others,” he said.
He defended his driving by saying that he was not driving aggressively and looking to save the tyres but the situation was such that he was not able to do anything about it. He said that the medium compounds did not change much either.
The Brazilian added that the team will have to look into why the car has not been able to find the right balance. He mentioned that Barcelona was much better and the team needs to get to that balance once again.
The second Grand Prix of the season is in Malaysia exactly one week away on March 25, 2012.
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