I think it is time to find another driver. Massa has had all the support he could get but he cannot get the pace out of the cars. If he was closer to Alonso as he used to be to MS and beating the Iceman this article would not be needed. Whether it was his accident that affected his skill or just getting older and less motivated, he has had his chance, now lets give someone else a chance to shine, the fans need more than excuses for the difference in performance because a few year back he would have been up their with Alonso, regardless that the car cannot win races in the dry.
Italian press that wanted Todt sacked after France 96? Italian press that wanted MS sacked after Jerez 97? Yeah the Italian press is a good baseline if you want knee jerk reactions I guess. Italian Ferrari fans are off course much more partisan about Ferrari, but to say they are the true Ferrari fans is probably not that true. I can only use the example of my dad and our football team, when he first started taking me to watch them and he had been following them since he was a boy we lost game after game after game, I never heard my dad being negative once, was always positives and always looking ahead, now plenty of other fans said negatives, who is the true fan?
What I am trying to say is that some fans prefer to be positive while others like to be pretty blunt, does not make one a better fan than the other. If we read this thread then I don't think its sugar coating Ferrari's overall problems, I don't think anyone is denying we are not where we should be, but if you think Massa scoring 0 points in 3 races is going to lose us the WCC then so be it, I personally think we will lose WCC by having a car not good enough so far. As a side note in 2008 Massa scored 0 points in the opening 2 races and went on to challenge the title.
I don't think changing Massa will suddenly make the F2012 a WCC winner and struggle to understand why anyone would think it would, our problems are much higher up. Massa was closer to Fernando in China IMO and performed as much as we can expect in that car, Alonso is clearly the best driver on the grid and he should be beating Felipe 9 times out of 10, just like MS did with Rubens, see 2005 and do not let the dominant years fool you into believing Rubens could match MS.
Forza Ferrari
This is all about having different points of view about how to resolve the real, underlying problem. And, at the risk of sounding like always repeating the same thing, all we do is speculate, after all most of us (if not all) in this forum are not informed sufficiently to know exactly what goes on inside the team, and perhaps we don't even know everything about the real issues they are facing.
I personally don't doubt the integrity of any of the fans in here, after all why would anyone be wasting his or her own time to analyze Ferrari's problems to death, even though, as I already said, we have limited information at hand.
You will also notice that I haven't, in whatever I posted in this thread so far, advocated that we should fire Massa - who am I to make this claim?
All I'm saying is that, at this particular moment, I am with those on the tail end of the distribution of fans who are absolutely dissatisfied with hearing the same things all over again about "we need to improve", "we need to find speed", "we lack downforce", and all that very obvious stuff (read the latest and you'll see what I mean: http://en.espnf1.com/f1/motorsport/s...ml?CMP=OTC-RSS).
Some of us are only satisfied when we see a decent call to action.
Letting go of Massa won't solve the problem, but harping about how good a race he's had in China is almost cynical I feel.
He did have a decent race compared to Alonso I thought anyway.
Forza Ferrari
Initially that's what I thought as well.
Probably what fooled me was his two-stop strategy, thanks to which, he was actually leading the pack at a particular stage of the race. And the fact that Alonso started 9th, which made his position look better in relative terms.
But the numbers say:
i. Alonso started 9th - and finished 9th. Bar the traffic and that mistake he made, he would have done a better job I'm sure.
ii. Massa started 12th - and finished 13th. He was one of only three drivers amongst the top 13 who have lost places compared to their starting position, together with the two Saubers. Bear in mind that Schumi retired, that means that he would potentially have finished in 14th place.
How much places do you think he should have gained then? Alonso gained no places, so how is Massa losing 1 place a bad reflection on him? Is Alonso not the better driver?
Do you think the 2 stop strategy helped or hindered Massa's race compared to the 3 stopping Alonso?
I just don't expect Massa to beat Alonso regularly, I guess some on here do though? It seems to me like either Alonso is under-rated or Massa over-rated by a lot of comments on here, I have said this before but when MS was destroying Rubens it was not because Rubens sucked it was because MS was simply better, why is Alonso never given that credit round here? It's really bizarre that we have the best driver on the grid yet all the talk is how Massa should be challenging him, I can't really understand it.
Forza Ferrari
Massa race was good.. No doubt about it..
But I suspect that a 2 stop race was quicker.
But exactly as Greig said.. do we expect him to out-perform Alonso? I think that was the maximum someone could ask from a number 2 driver!
Yes his first 2 races were shockers, but if he can perform like this from here on in then keep him I say... I support ferrari in their support of massa
With this I fully agree.
I can't say whether the strategy was good or not, from what I've heard in the post race interviews, both drivers seemed unhappy with their respective strategies.
No, Massa shouldn't be outperforming Alonso regularly. But he should at least be scoring some points. With the new points system, you don't need to get on the podium to do that - all you need to be is a decent midfield driver.
Last edited by F2002; 16th April 2012 at 10:43.
If we are all agreeing that Alonso's race result is more or less where he should be,how come Massa ending the race 5 seconds behind him be a bad result???????
I would never say it was a brilliant race for any of them as it was very difficult to attack the cars in front and even worse to defend from the ones behind!!
With such a clear disadvantage Alonso 37.2sec and Massa 42.7sec behind Rosberg who never ever had any one bothering him is acceptable to me.
The two cars in between them [Sauber] although using our engines,Kers and gearboxes where way faster on the straights,so yes Massa was not so bad after all!!
We have also been bashing Massa and wanting Perez instead these last 3 weeks!! While at the same time admitting the Sauber is a much better car!!
Massa ended the race 1.7 seconds behind Perez with the same 2 stop strategy.
If Perez and his Sauber are so much better how can you say Massa had a bad race?
Last edited by Dino; 16th April 2012 at 12:01.
i second this! ...and he was up to second purely based on his pace+strategy and not just because someone fell off in front of him (except for MS). plus, all the while that he ran second, he was quite composed and consistent. the bunching up behind him was due to others running the same pace and not him slowing everyone else down.
overall, a much more confident looking Felipe. come to think of it, Fernando was the one who looked scrappy - falling off rapidly from Lewis after the pit stop and getting it all wrong on the marbles and he was still a good couple of seconds behind the Williams pair. trying too hard, perhaps?
Felipe Massa for World Champion 2012!
So I guess half your wish came true
Lewis in a McLaren that's way faster than the Ferrari, did you not expect Lewis to pull away? We did not have the top speed to beat the Williams at the straight, so Alonso had to do it the hard way. Sure it was a mistake, but stuff like that happens when you're actually trying. At the end of the day, Alonso managed 2 points which is important for the world title.
Its possible to support one Ferrari driver without bashing the other. Try it sometime
We need quick pull on the upgrade string and after giving our drivers a good car, we can fight over who is better over whom.. at this stage we can only hope to gain some points.. talks over who cud've done better is ridiculous for now.. lets just keep our composure and after all our upgrades have come together.. i promise we will only fight over how many drivers we passed and who overtook more drivers.. wow! even the sound of that is exciting :)
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Thank YOU
You're exaggerating, but have a point (oops - the b word again!)
We're only arguing between ourselves because we're having another crap season.
Let's bring the thread back to where it should be.
All the best to Felipe - after all what we really want is to see him on the podium next to Fernando.
The Massa fans dont use the BUT word then?
He drove fantastic, BUT the car is bad. BUT there was traffic. BUT it was bad luck. BUT it was the pitstop.
And this thread pops up after every race, since his driving is under par every race.
But since Ferrari isnīt in F1 for its own sake, and scoring points, itīs all ok. Just as long as Massa is happy, sleeps good, and gets a nice paycheck its all ok. The results will come...we havenīt seen them for 4 years....but hey, whats the rush?
Blame the car all you want. It isnīt the worst car in the field either. Last year he didnīt manage to get a top 4 finish. Take a good look at his results since 2009. They speak for themselves.
Well I guess it was hard for him to score results in 2009 despite doubling the points Kimi had up to Hungary, and I guess in 2010 when Alonso won 6 races and Massa was on the podium for 5 of them it was not getting a result. 2011 was a poor season no doubt about it, BUT anyone can see lot's of things did not go his way.
Maybe you should just not bother posting in this thread as you seem incapable of doing anything but whine? go and find a more productive thread for you to actually add something nice to the forum?
Forza Ferrari
He has been on the podium 6 times since 2009. Thats it. No but, if or anything else. 2 podiums a year on average.
And when you read about titlecontenders itīs always McL, Red Bull and Ferrari (or Alonso). People doesnīt even see Massa as a contender...look how the top drivers are speaking. They mention the oponents by their team, and instead of Ferrari they say Alonso.
Curbs I do wonder why you persist with your arguments in this thread when there are others in which you could discuss your grievances. It's a support thread, can you not take it elsewhere?
Forza Jules
just found this article, massa is doing an extremley good job against the best driver on the griud, 0.3-0.5 in quali most times is not bad at all, and as we have seen, massas race craft is great, for example his pass on kimi today, he stuck to his guns, come on felipe!!!!
Apr.22 (GMM) Felipe Massa’s future in F1 is at stake in 2012, Ferrari team boss Stefano Domenicali has warned, saying that the struggling Brazilian driver, already fighting to keep his seat with the Maranello based team, “needs to improve” for the very sake of his “future in F1″.
Felipe Massa has struggled in the cockpit of the Ferrari F2012
Domenicali’s latest interview in the Spanish newspaper El Mundo indicates therefore that not only is Massa’s Ferrari seat in doubt, but that he might struggle to find any place on the grid next season.
Rubens Barrichello, once the great Michael Schumacher’s number two teammate at Ferrari, recently advised his friend Massa to “relax” as he faces being destroyed by the Italian marque’s new hero, Fernando Alonso.
“Felipe needs to accept,” said Domenicali, “that he is facing a very strong teammate. If not, that hurts him. He needs to assume a clear role rather than trying to take advantage — you need to learn from Fernando, not challenge him.
“That [challenging)] is the way to being destroyed by a teammate such as Alonso or Schumacher, who are real cannibals,” Domenicali insisted.
Apparently justifying Alonso’s dominant position, Domenicali said Ferrari has a “moral obligation” to champion the highly rated Spaniard.
That influence will extend to the selection of his 2013 teammate, Domenicali hinted.
“He [Alonso] has a central role in the team, and he therefore participates in the important issues,” said the Italian.
I really doubt Stefano said this to be honest.
Forza Ferrari
I think Filipe's performance is indicative of the strength of the F2012. But, don't expect Domenicali or anyopne else whose neck might be on the line to do anything other than use Massa as a scapegoat.
@ Greig..Me too...anyone notice Felipe up Nando's tailpipes today?
Time for everyone to chill on Felipe. And Ferrari has no room to say anything about the kid. Just give them both a good car.
They will do the talking on the track.
To be honest, I'd seen that "article" but decided against posting it, here's the link from Total F1. com:
http://totalf1.com/full_story/view/4...e_is_at_stake/
I don't know the site "personally"; but, I'm sure someone could shed some light on its reliability!
Good job Felipe
Keep it going and beat Fernando fair and square!
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