Massa: It's great proving critics wrong

Friday 24th October 2008

Felipe Massa says he's delighted at having proven his critics wrong throughout this year's campaign as he prepares for the final race of the season.

Massa heads to Brazil as one of only two men in a position to win this year's World title having come along way from being the driver many believed Ferrari should sack.

After back-to-back non-finishes at the start of this season, many were calling for Ferrari to sack Massa as the general consensus was that the Brazilian was too error prone.

However, he fought back, winning three of the next six races to bring himself into contention for the title. Massa has steadily maintained his approach and now sees himself just seven points adrift of Lewis Hamilton into the Championship race and with the ultimate chance to silence his critics.

"I think when you show people something that they don't believe, it's even more nice for you," Autosport quoted Massa as saying.

"People always put me completely out of the game. Nobody expects you to do a good job and then you do a better job than everyone thinks and it's even nicer.

"I'm sure if I started my career as a Ferrari test driver my reputation would have been completely different. Because of the first year, which was bad, my reputation was bad for so many years."

The Brazilian does, however, concede the fact that during his first few seasons in F1 he was the 'enfant terrible' and prone to crash.

"I was a little bit of a wild guy, it's true," he said. "But I had a very difficult car to drive. I was very young - maybe too young to start straight away.

"Sauber had the best year in 2001 with Kimi (Raikkonen) and Nick (Heidfeld). I came in the next year and they expected me to do exactly the same as Kimi did, but the car was not as good as it was the previous season. So I tried too much.

"I made some good results, scored some good points and made some good races. But I made some very bad races as well.

"That was not a great thing for my image and it took very long to recover and change my image in Formula One. But fortunately I think we changed it."

One thing, though, that would cement his new image is a victory in a Drivers' Championship which the Ferrari man hopes to achieve next Sunday at his home race in Brazil.

"I hope it will be quite a good deal," he said. "I think it is just a great feeling to first of all be in the position to fight for the world championship, to be in my home race, so I think that is really nice feeling.

"But we have had (races like) Hungary and Singapore this year - and we had many races where unfortunately we could not score. But that is racing, and until the last lap you never know what is going to happen.

"You drive a car where everything is on the limit to be at the maximum performance, but to finish the race as well.

"Sometimes things don't work like that, and it is racing. It won't be the first time and it won't be the last time, but you learn a lot with these bad results."

Formula 1 2008 Season. Click here to bet.
 

Post to del.icio.us

E-mail Article Print-Friendly Version Subscribe to News RSS Feed