Felipe Massa has explained how it was apparently his decision to yield to Ferrari team-mate Fernando Alonso in Sunday’s German Grand Prix. Having led since the start, thanks to a superb getaway from third place, the Brazilian received a Lap 48 information feed via team radio and duly backed off whilst exiting the hairpin shortly afterwards.
Having heard the radio message from Race Engineer Rob Smedley, who explained that Alonso was running quicker behind, the Spaniard drove past before going on to collect his second win of the year. However, despite being clearly dejected after the Grand Prix, Massa’s comments in the FIA media pen suggested otherwise.
“Yeah, sure,” Massa replied when asked by BBC Sport if he, as the team had already commented, had himself elected to slow down. “I didn’t have good pace on the Hard tyres, which is not the first time it has happened this year – most of the time when we have been using the Hard tyres the same thing has happened, so it was my decision.”
Massa then denied any team orders, for which the Scuderia has since been fined $100,000 dollars by race stewards. “Well, for sure we always need to think that we’re working for the team but we didn’t have team orders in the race, so I took my decision because I was struggling on the Hard tyres and that’s the direction (we are going in),” he continued, before being asked to confirm whether Alonso was actually quicker.
“Yeah, I think everybody saw, no?” Massa was then quizzed over whether his 2010 title attack is now over, as long as Alonso is ahead in the points. “I don’t know,” he said.
“For sure, we’ve lost so many points and we are many points behind the leader and I think, you know, in this championship it would be very, very difficult for me, you know? But, anyway, you never know.”
Finally, Felipe – whose anniversary of his near-fatal Hungarian Grand Prix qualifying crash was on Sunday – was asked if his championship position would have changed, should he have won in Germany. “I would have been happy,” he replies with a wry smile.
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