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Massa calls on Williams to regain top speed

Felipe Massa says Williams needs to regain its top speed advantage to be able to beat Ferrari this year.

Sebastian Vettel finished third ahead of Massa in the Australian Grand Prix as Ferrari showed a major step forward in competitiveness compared to 2014. With the two teams closely matched, Massa says Williams has lost its main advantage of impressive straight line speed from last season.

“I think the only that we see is that we don’t have an advantage on the straight anymore,” Massa said. “The only thing that Ferrari shows that they have improved massively is the engine, they have a much better system, a much better engine compared to last year.

“So last year we had a car that we were losing in the corners, we had less downforce than Ferrari, but we were gaining on the straights. For sure, this year the car is much better in terms of downforce and better in the corners, so we already finish in a good way, but how we start we are losing massively.

“We were compensating the speed we were gaining on the straight, but this time we don’t have this difference on the straight anymore. We need to work as strong as we can because we are fighting with a top team that has a big possibility financially to develop the car. I am really thinking we can do it though.”

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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.