When Ferrari announced that Felipe Massa would be leaving the team after an eight-year stint with them, it appeared at first to sound the death knell for the Brazilian driver. But in 2014, he has been like a driver reborn after an admittedly inauspicious start.
Massa himself had talked like he was cursed as a wave of bad luck hit him in the early part of the season. First he was hit by Kamui Kobayashi at the Australian Grand Prix, he was hindered by the safety car in Bahrain and there was the botched pitstop at the Chinese Grand Prix to name but a few.
But the tide has turned with three top-five finishes in his last four races and a first podium for 26 Grands Prix in Italy two weekends ago much to the delight of a Monza crowd, who will always hold the affable Brazilian dear to their hearts for his commitment to Ferrari’s cause for so many years as second fiddle to Michael Schumacher and then Fernando Alonso.
The key to his personal resurgence at a team similarly reborn in Williams has been quite simple. The British manufacturer has spent big to close the gap at the front of the grid – their most recent financial figures earlier this month revealed they had made £20 million (Dh119m) in losses for the first six months of the year.
Much of that has been on the £8m (Dh47m) increase on engine costs to switch to Mercedes, a smart move as it has transpired. In addition, money has been spent on bringing in key personnel, among them Massa’s long time race engineer Rob Smedley.
Drivers like to feel settled at new teams and none more so than Massa who, on the days when his fiery temperament spilled over on the race track, looked to Smedley’s calming influence. The Brit’s switch with the driver has been a vital cog in how quickly he has become relaxed.
But the other keys off the track are quite simplistic. Massa has long wanted to feel in demand and that hadn’t been the case. At Ferrari, despite occasional protestations to suggest otherwise, he was very much the team’s No2 behind Alonso, who was on a considerably higher salary and wanted the team built around him.
Frank Williams merely sat his new driver down at the start of the season and told him there would be no No1 status, both drivers would have an equal footing and it has proved to be one of the great driver partnerships of the season and totally devoid of any fractiousness.
Williams see Valtteri Bottas as a world champion in the making and it’s worth noting that the Finn, with 122 points to Massa’s 65, has had a much better season but that does not tell the entire story.
Massa’s litany of early-season problems allied to the race retirements in Britain and Germany when Bottas took a brace of second places have to be factored in.
It is telling that Williams have had a penchant for chopping and changing drivers, the sense being that there is always better talent out there. Not so this season; the team having recently announced that Bottas, with his pace, and Massa would be staying put.
So what is it exactly that Massa brings? His race engineers have waxed lyrical about the detail of his feedback throughout the course of a race weekend as well as a differing view point from years spent at the Maranello. More broadly, he has turned into the voice of reason as one of the elder statesmen of F1. When Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton came together in Spa, Massa publicly admitted he was baffled Rosberg was not penalised by the race stewards.
When the team radio ban was mooted prior to Singapore, it was Massa that led the way in bemoaning the move, predicting it would be “a big fight” if the FIA pushed ahead with it.
He has well and truly stepped out of the shadow of Alonso at Ferrari and, had the team got him to change tyres during the safety car in Singapore, he might well have had the chance to challenge his team-mate for fourth under the night lights.
Instead, he said he was left “driving like a grandma”. He may have been sluggish at times in recent seasons but with the belief of a team behind him, he is now anything but in what is his 13th season in F1.
