Felipe Massa and Fernando Alonso were teammates at Ferrari from 2010 to 2013 and during this period the two-time world champion showed clearly more convincing results than the Brazilian.
The score of their qualifying matches was 59:18 in favor of Fernando, who also defeated his partner in 65 Grand Prix, while Felipe managed this only 12 times. Alonso was the undisputed leader of the Scuderia and became vice world champion three times in those years.
This happened again in 2013 and Massa finished his last season with the Maranello team in 8th place in the personal rankings, after which he moved to Williams.
But for Felipe it is not very pleasant to think back on that period, because psychologically it was very difficult for him to work with Alonso, and he talked about this during his participation in the Track Limits podcast.
“I think he and I always got along well off the court, and on a personal level I had no problems with him,” Massa said. “But his typical way of working was the use of power. And he had a lot of power, and he tried to use it in everything. I think this has led to a rift in the team.
His methods obviously weren’t the best, but that’s the kind of person he is, you know? The problem is that splitting the team didn’t help matters. You have to be in good shape to beat him, and I was in that shape in many races, but something happened because he deliberately put me in an uncomfortable position psychologically. This may have caused me to make mistakes, or other issues may arise.
None of this was very fair. I can’t say that the team did anything wrong, but the way the work was organized, the way the team perceived it, was not very comfortable for me.
For example, I remember that when we started modernizing the simulator, we did a lot of work together with Alonso. The Red Bull simulator was much better, even better than McLaren’s. But one day in the middle of the season he suddenly said: “I don’t want to work on the simulator anymore, because it doesn’t yield anything.”
In general, he decided to stop working on the simulator, but I continued with it, also because I was not in the best shape and that season we did not have the best car. And then we went to Singapore, and suddenly Alonso won the race.
After that Grand Prix, Luca di Montezemolo, the president of Ferrari, came to the press and said: “Fernando works so hard with the team, being at the base every week, training in the simulator and taking part in meetings with the engineers – it is just incredible.”
When you hear that and realize that you are considered driver number two, it destroys you psychologically.”
Source: F1 News
I am Christopher Clyde, an experienced journalist and content writer with a passion for sports. I have been writing about Formula 1 news for the past five years and am currently employed as an author at athletistic.com, one of the top sports websites in the US.
