Ferrari’s Felipe Massa blames delayed pitstop for missing 4th position in European GP – Formula 1
Ferrari driver Felipe Massa has said that he was unable to challenge Lewis Hamilton for the 4th place because his team delayed his pit stop which affected his performance severely.
“It was a good race spent constantly fighting other drivers. I tried to get the most out of the Option tyres because we reckoned that with the Prime, our pace was not at its best. It was a shame about the problem at my second pit stop, when I lost those
four or five seconds which cost me the chance of fighting Hamilton for fourth place,” said Massa.
Ferrari had a pretty good weekend overall though as Fernando Alonso finished in 2nd place behind the race winner Sebastian Vettel while Massa scored a usual mid position finish as he finished in 5th place in the end ahead of Jenson
Button in 6th.
Alonso had a pretty decent race as he started from 4th place and gained some ground at the start of the race with constant support from Massa who came up to 4th place by overtaking Lewis Hamilton.
It seemed at the start that the race was pretty much going to be a battle between Ferrari and Red Bull Racing Team but by the end of it, Hamilton made a lot of improvement and finished ahead of the Brazilian driver.
“I got a very good start, passing Hamilton and Fernando. Then, I also tried to attack Webber, but he closed the door on me and we almost touched, so Fernando got the chance to go round the outside and pass me back,” he added.
Nevertheless, it seems that the 2011 Formula 1 season is in Sebastian Vettel’s hands at the moment as he has been dominating each race by a margin.
Since the Blown Diffusers will be banned starting from the upcoming British Grand Prix, it is believed that Red Bull Racing team’s performance might deteriorate massively. However, it seems that the rest of the teams are not improving a lot either which
means that the order of the teams might not get affected by this ban much.
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