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Mentality in F1 unchanged over the years - Massa

Felipe Massa believes today's F1 is no different than the world he was introduced to when he started his career in 2002.

For all the criticism directed towards the sport, F1's issues  have pretty much remained the same according to the 36-year-old.

"In the moment that I started, overtaking was very difficult, we didn’t have DRS and everyone was complaining about the same thing," Massa told Motorsport.com.

"They said ‘ah, we need to overtake’, ‘ah, we cannot follow the cars’, ‘ah, the top teams have more than the other teams’, ‘ah it’s too expensive’…

"What is different? I don’t really see a big change. Maybe in that time, teams spent even more money than they are now but the gap between the best and the worst was huge, like it is now.

"This is F1. Hopefully it will change in the future, but I didn’t see a big change."

Despite the technological evolution, Massa believes the job at hand and how a driver achieves success hasn't changed. 

"They are different cars but the mentality – the way you are driving, what you put into the car, how you try to get the best out of the car – is no different.

"It’s just different types of cars, different rules, different tyres, different engines. To be an F1 driver, you need to be the best and you need to take the best out of the car.

"It was always like that in F1, it hasn’t been anything different from when I started to now. How things work is not so different."

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Michael Delaney

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