Massa Salvages
Third In
Monte Carlo

Felip Massa
Monaco Grand Prix: 3rd + 1'09.114


Ferrari's Felipe Massa was only able to place third in Sunday's Grand Prix of Monte Carlo, as his F2007 was clearly not up to the task of taking down the McLaren drivers. Massa pushed hard at the start, though it soon became apparent that he would have to be content with third place as the McLaren car was simply superior in Monaco. This is what the Brazilian had to say:

"I think this was the best possible result I could have got today, given the pace of our closest rivals. At half distance, given the situation, I concentrated on just managing my race and bringing the car home. These six points are very important: the championship is still very open and there is still a very long way to go. We tried to see if we could change the situation by using the extra soft tyres in the second stint of the race, but it did not make much difference. The main problem today was the traffic: I lost a lot of time behind backmarkers, but I don’t think that had any effect on the final result. Today we were the inferior of the two teams, but we have all we need to get back to winning again, right from the next race."

There is little to say really. Massa started third and finished third. He had no major battles, no pit stop problems, no near misses and no excitement. In fact it would have been foolish for Felipe to push any harder than he did. He would not have been able to catch the McLaren duo of Hamilton and Alonso and would likely have damaged his F2007 trying to do so. Certainly not a good move as he needed the eight points for third place to stay in the immediate championship fight.

The F2007 simply was not up to the task in Monte Carlo and Massa knew this. He drove a smart race, even if it was rather unexciting. This was frankly the best he could have hoped for.