Massa: "I'm in the fight"

Felipe Massa has often played the archetypal second driver at Ferrari; putting in strong performances and winning the odd race, but constantly driving in the shadow of the team’s number one. That could all be about to change.


After two years of driving in the shadow of Kimi Raikkonen and Michael Schumacher the 27-year-old seems, at last, to be coming into his own in the 2008 season.


In the five races so far, Massa has already won twice, taking wins in Bahrain and Turkey. In fact, if he had not thrown away second place in Malaysia, the Brazilian would currently be leading the pack in the race for the championship.


Apart from the error in Malaysia, Massa has shown strong consistency this season, especially in qualifying where he has out-qualified teammate Kimi Raikkonen 4-1.


This consistency has answered some of Massa’s critics, who often claim that he does not possess the consistency to mount a serious title challenge, a claim which arose during his time with Sauber and his first year at Ferrari following several high-profile accidents and spins.


Massa is confident this will be the year he finally proves those critics wrong though, noting: “I'm right in there in the fight, If you look at the past races, Kimi won one, I won the next one, Kimi won again and I won the Turkish race.”


“For sure it's always very tight, the competition is very high, but after some races I feel I can be competitive everywhere and I'm just happy to reduce the gap a little bit, being similar to Lewis (Hamilton) and just concentrating on the next races.” continued Massa.


The Brazilian driver highlighted his new found maturity by pointing out the effect that tactics now have on his and teammate Raikkonen’s driving.


“We know that sometimes you can win, sometimes you cannot win, but you need to score points like Kimi did (in Istanbul).”


“It's important to be competitive and then in the last three races you're going to see who is going to have the greater chance to win, but it's important to be consistent and to try to get a lot of points race-by-race, even if it's first or third or fifth, whatever.”


Massa’s next chance to close the gap on Raikkonen in the driver’s championship comes at the famous Monte Carlo street circuit in Monaco on May 25