Q: Felipe, pole position last year to fifth place, but fifth the year before from 21st on the grid – it’s an interesting circuit for you.
Felipe MASSA: Yeah, for sure, I like the circuit. Last year, we had pole position. Unfortunately the race was not as perfect as the qualifying, so hopefully we can have a very good weekend on Sunday, especially. I’m looking forward to it. It was a very frustrating race for us in Australia and hopefully now we can start a new championship because the last race was not like everybody expected in the team. But everybody is really looking forward because we have a good car, working on the problems that we had last week. We’ve pretty much solved the problems, so hopefully we can have a very good weekend. Q: You had a lot of incidents last weekend. It wasn’t just the final one – which didn’t cause your retirement, of course, but there was the first lap – it was a lively race for you.
FM: Hopefully, when we have a very bad weekend, especially not finishing the race because of reliability problems, everything has happened in this race, so now we are looking forward to having a very clean race and finishing in the end.
Q: Did you hear David’s threat on television...?
FM: I was a bit surprised, to be honest, because we are there to race. I tried to pass him. I was inside and he closed (the door on) me and we crashed. I think everybody knows two cars cannot be in the same place in a corner and usually the guy who’s outside has more possibility to go off, so that’s it.
Q: So you haven’t apologised then?
FM: No, because I didn’t do anything wrong. When I do something wrong, I will apologise but this time I don’t need to.
QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR
Q: (Jon McEvoy – The Daily Mail) Felipe, I was just wondering about your response to David’s explanation of the accident last week. It looked from your face that you didn’t see it the way that he saw it.
FM: Like I said, that’s racing. As Robert said, that’s racing. Everyone is racing and when you are quicker than the car in front you try to overtake. I did a normal manoeuvre. I dived inside and to be honest I didn’t expect David to close the door completely, so I didn’t have anything to do. In my opinion he didn’t see me, but that’s my opinion. Also when you do something wrong the FIA is there to take action. They didn’t even put my car or his car under investigation, so it was a pretty normal incident.
Q: (Paolo Ianieri – La Gazzetta dello Sport) Felipe, this is just the second race of the season but already there are rumours about next year and one of them was about Sebastian (Vettel) replacing you in Ferrari from 2009.
FM: I have a three year contract, so I am very comfortable in the team. Everybody is happy with the team itself, everybody, but for sure the last race was not a very fantastic weekend for everybody in the team. For the drivers, but also for the team and the reliability and you know it is not because of one result that it is going to change everything in the team. So everybody is happy with the drivers, everybody is happy with the team itself and I have a three year contract if you don’t remember.
Q: (Andrea Cremonesi – La Gazzetta dello Sport) Felipe, may I ask you a comment please about the decision of the Ferrari board and that Jean Todt is leaving the role of CEO. And could you tell us why you and your team-mate made so many mistakes during the race because the feeling is that you lose a little bit of your temper after what happened in qualifying. Is it true that you are a little bit more nervous than usual?
FM: No, it is not true. About Jean, you need to ask him. He is here, so you are welcome to speak to him and even after yesterday what we saw in the communication from Ferrari he is still around. He still participates in the most important decisions of the Ferrari F1 team. I feel that he is still taking a lot of responsibility for everything that is happening in the team. I think you should ask him because the only thing I can say is that he is still around 100 per cent. Maybe he is not coming to all the races, maybe he is not working from 7 o’clock to 9 o’clock in the evening like he was doing before but he is still around for the most important decisions. But anyway you ask him what you wanted to ask. About the race, it was a very crazy race. Not just for me or Kimi or the team. I lost many places at the start, so for sure I was recovering all the places I lost. I was recovering my race and I would have been able to finish in a good position because the pace was very good. Unfortunately we had a very bad race for both cars and also for the team because of reliability. It is not because of the new rules. It is not because of the modifications that we had from this year to last year that caused all the problems. It was just a bad race for us.
Q: (Livio Oricchio – O Estado de Sao Paulo) Massa, does your team already know what exactly happened with the engines?
FM: Yeah, we broke the valve in the engine and for the clear specification I think you should ask our technical people. For sure speaking to an engineer it looks like we are very confident that we solved the problem but we prefer to not answer everything because it is better to ask out technical people. |
