Felipe Massa tells F1i that he feels “at home” since joining Williams from Ferrari in early 2014.
The Brazilian’s previous eight-year spell in Italy culminated with his coming tantalizingly close to securing the 2008 title. Despite Maranello experiencing a noticeable drop in performance in 2009, Massa was still ahead of world champion team-mate Kimi Raikkonen when he suffered a near-fatal head injury in qualifying for the Hungarian Grand Prix.
The 11-time grand prix winner made a full recovery but then had to live in Fernando Alonso’s shadow for the next four years before leaving for Grove. While Massa’s start to his 2014 season proved to be challenging, the F1 veteran then hit his stride and has since been a match for the highly-rated Valtteri Bottas.
Asked by F1i’s Chris Medland whether he was enjoying life more at Williams, the 34-year-old replied:
“I think so! It’s a great team, the people are really nice and people respect me a lot. So I really feel at home and we work very well together.
“We are never happy, we always want more and this is the positive thing which you need to improve and to be better all the time. So this is what we are pushing for, not me alone but many people inside the team.”
Having been in the doldrums for nearly a decade, the revered British outfit has bounced back in style since the introduction of the 1.6-litre V6 turbocharged power units, securing third in the Constructors’ championship two years in a row.
Williams’ level of performance seems to have slightly stagnated in 2015 but Massa reminds that his team still beat better funded rivals like Red Bull and McLaren, and says it can keep apace by further optimising its current structure.
“We are fighting with the big teams. We are fighting with teams that are bigger; they have a lot more money than what we have. We know that to beat these teams we need to do like a triple improvement from one year to the other and that is what we are trying to do.
“We need a lot to become like a top team in terms of money compared to the others and this we know is quite difficult. But I think we need to improve what we have and improve by making the job efficient - even by having less people working - is what we need to do and what we are trying.
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