Felipe Massa says Ferrari has a strong chance of winning the Bahrain Grand Prix and has called on Williams to learn from his former team.
Ferrari has made the biggest step forward over the winter and was able to beat Mercedes in Malaysia as Sebastian Vettel took victory. Both Ferraris were also quick in China to underline the progress made, and Massa says Williams is still as competitive as last season but needs to learn how Ferrari has managed to make such a major improvement.
"The only thing that changed was Ferrari compared to everybody," Massa said. "In Melbourne we were a little bit slower, we were maybe better in the qualifying, but even in the last qualifying [in China] we were qualifying both cars in the middle of the two Ferraris.
"We are in the fight in the qualifying, but Ferrari is the only team that makes a big gap between qualifying and the race, so Ferrari took more than a second, maybe a second, compared to Mercedes in the last qualifying compared to the race. One second, I tell you, is a lot of time.
"I think Ferrari is maybe the team that has the tyre usage in a complete different way to everybody, and for sure we are working to get as close as we can, but they use the tyres in a complete different way and they have a lot less degradation than everybody - even compared to Mercedes, because if you take one second in the qualifying and you are in the same pace in the race, even compared to Mercedes they are better. I think they are the only team that makes that gap from qualifying to the race and for us it was not easy to have the same pace because we couldn’t, until now, use the tyres in the same way."
And Massa says Ferrari's tyre management should give it an even bigger advantage in Bahrain than in China, allowing to challenge Mercedes more closely.
"It’s like Malaysia. In Malaysia everything was related to the rear tyres and they won the race, so here is another track where the rears are a lot more important than the front, in China it was a lot related to the front tyres and they [Ferrari] still had a good pace.
"I think they proved in a different type of track that they were strong in the race, so I think we cannot stop working and stop understanding the car and trying to improve. But it’s also true that we are third in the championship as well, so it’s not that we are having a complete disaster at the beginning of the season, it’s not correct to say that, we just need to see if we can fight with the Ferrari because Mercedes is already far, but anyway Ferrari is not far from Mercedes."
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