Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race Results

F1 driver dinner showed changing mentality - Massa

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Felipe Massa believes the dinner attended by the majority of drivers ahead of the Chinese Grand Prix shows a changing mentality towards each other.

A number of drivers were present in Shanghai on Wednesday evening for a dinner organised by the Grand Prix Drivers' Association (GPDA) and attended by some non-members such as Lewis Hamilton. Massa says the gathering showed the drivers are united in pushing for change in F1 but also allowed them to get to know each other better on a personal level.

“I think it was a very nice dinner that we had yesterday, so we need to try to do other dinners like that," Massa said. "We need to try to be very close between the drivers and I think maybe even we can change a bit of the mentality.

"It is really negative in Formula 1, nobody sees each other in the paddock, everybody is stuck inside a room or a meeting and everything, so we race together but not just on the track you know, so I think that was really nice.

"We had a lot of fun yesterday, and I think you also see things that maybe you don’t know because you don’t know the other drivers, so maybe you are talking you have fun, you really have a different feeling to people that maybe you don’t know."

And Massa says the drivers know they can provide a strong front if they work together to try and improve the future of the sport.

"I think we need to repeat this more and I think we need to be united because we have a lot of power, and I think drivers together, united, we can push for the better of the show, the better of the sport and we can help.

"We want to be here to drive Formula 1 and to be really positive about Formula 1, I mean it was always our dream, the dream for all the drivers who were there together yesterday, it was the dream for everybody to be in Formula 1 and it is still the dream. We need to talk good about Formula 1, we need to try and help Formula 1 and I think we can definitely do a lot to help and I think maybe Formula 1 needs some help.”

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.