Ferrari's Felipe Massa renders Mercedes GP as title contenders after Chinese Grand Prix performance
Ferrari’s Felipe Massa has recently stated that he believes Mercedes GP is going to become a major threat in the near future especially after the team’s performance at the Chinese Grand Prix.
“After Shanghai, we must also consider Mercedes as being part of the fight for the top places. They definitely have a quicker car than us for qualifying, but it's not yet a match for Red Bull,” said Massa.
Both of the drivers of the team finished inside the points as Nico Rosberg scored the 5th place after qualifying in 4th place while his teammate Michael Schumacher finished in 8th place after qualifying in 14th place. It
was a pretty good run by the 7 time world champion but since the team scored some pretty amazing results during the pre-season testing period, the fans are expecting a lot more from the team.
Nico Rosberg got the opportunity to lead the race twice in China and since the team is improving with each race, it is expected that they are going to become stronger in Turkey and they might even challenge for the podium positions as well.
However, Red Bull Racing Team and McLaren are performing extremely well as well but according to Red Bull’s performance up until now, it seems that the team is struggling to perform as good as its qualifying run during the races.
“But it is also true that the Red Bulls suffer more than most in a performance drop off from qualifying to the race, so this could see Mercedes continuing to be very competitive now in the races,” Felipe stated.
The Ferrari driver also said that although Lewis Hamilton’s recent victory was impressive, Sebastian Vettel still had a comfortable lead in terms of points over the Brit, which gives the German a mental edge over his McLaren opponent.
The Brazilian driver will now be eyeing the Turkish Grand Prix and hoping that Ferrari bring in some quick upgrades to improve the overall performance of the scarlet machine. The Turkish Grand Prix kicks off on Sunday, May 8, 2011.
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