Retirement feeling won't hit until next season - Massa

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Felipe Massa says he isn't feeling a difference during his final race weekend as he focuses on the job at hand and expects retirement to sink in at the start of next year.

The Brazilian is taking part in his final race weekend at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix before he retires from racing in F1. Having finished FP2 in tenth place on Friday, Massa says he is 100% committed to performing to his best rather than savouring the moment.

"For sure I would love to finish the last Friday first, unfortunately we are not," Massa said. "But anyway we were just trying to understand the car and trying to do the best that we can to understand the car on the new tyres but also on the long run to see if anything can be possible to do better this weekend than in the last few weekends.

"So we know it’s not so easy but we will try and I will try everything that I can on my last race.”

Asked if he was thinking about this weekend being his last as an F1 driver, Massa insists his focus is solely on preparing for the race.

“I didn’t think about it, to be honest. When you are in the race weekend you are just thinking about the car, thinking about the set-up, so for sure I didn’t even think about it being my last Friday. You just said about it now…

"Everything is going in a good way so I’m not feeling anything, but maybe when the season starts for sure you feel a little bit more.

"Maybe when you start next season and you’re not there it will be something a bit strange and you’re going to feel more than just now when it’s the end of the season and everybody wants to stop, everybody wants to go home, everybody wants to relax and have some holidays or whatever. So maybe the beginning of the season will be a little bit more tough than it is now."

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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.