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Massa talks Formula One in London - Transcript
With the British Grand Prix in sight, Felipe Massa took time out of his busy schedule to entertain over 500 Shell employees at Shell Centre, London. Read the full transcript here.
Felipe how big a difference has it made to you and to the team not having any in season testings?
Well for sure it’s a big difference. Especially in the past, three or four years ago, we used to test every week and then it was getting less and less during this last three years and now we don’t have tests anymore. We just test before the season and after the season.
And then we have also all the practice on Friday before the race. So the job done in the factory now is much more important and sometimes we need to test some new pieces on the racetrack straightaway on the race weekend.
We used to arrive everything ready for the weekend and now we use Friday as a normal session of trying different pieces on the car to see if it works, to see which one is the best combination. And one of the important things is also related to the job done by Ferrari and Shell because now the job done is inside the factory to improve the power of on the engine.
It’s almost impossible to change the engine now because of the engine freeze so the job done on the lubricants, on the fuel to improve the power, but also the reliability is much more important. So now the job done in the factory is a lot more important than in the past.
You mentioned about the development, the rate of development this season has been really astonishing. Is it the greatest rate of development you’ve experienced during your Formula One career would you say?
Well I think the development, if you take the first race, for sure we started the season not with fantastic performance with all these rule changes and everything it was not so easy for us. But I would say the development between the first race and now was very good, the car improved a lot, we closed the gap very quickly to the guys in the front. For sure we still need to work to improve the situation but I think the development done from the first race to now was quite good.
Now these 2009 cars are quite different from last year’s, you’ve no groove tyres anymore, you’ve got slicks, you’ve got these tiny rear wings, these great big front wings. How different are these cars to drive and do you prefer them to the old style?
It’s different, for sure the car at the beginning of the season, you had a lot less downforce than the past so the car is sliding much more but it’s quite fun. I enjoy driving the car this season. I enjoyed as well the car from last season but it’s different. It’s difficult to compare the way of driving the car from this season and the car from last season.
The car of this season, especially on the old tyres, the car is much more difficult. I mean drivers need to put in a lot of effort, you need to drive much smoother you cannot be so aggressive because you lose performance from the new tyres to the old tyres, it has a lot less downforce. But it’s quite fun, I enjoy it.
