Felipe Massa has given the lie to those who suggested
Ferrari were merely cruising and had plenty in-hand in the Spanish Grand Prix a week ago, but insisting both he and race-winning team-mate
Kimi Raikkonen were ‘flat-out' throughout the opening two-thirds of the race.
Whilst Raikkonen and Massa ultimately came home one-two in Barcelona – Maranello's second double in succession – both
Lewis Hamilton in the McLaren-Mercedes and BMW-Sauber's
Robert Kubica took the chequered flag within six seconds of the two scarlet machines, and the Brazilian insisted the situation was in reality every bit as close as it looked.
“I was going flat-out in the race and I used all the potential of the car,” Massa affirmed, “until the final stint when we knew everything would be quieter after the pit-stops. Until that point, Kimi and I were flat-out.
“In the first part of the race, it was not so difficult to pull out a gap on those behind us, but after the safety car the field was all bunched up together again, which made our life a little bit more difficult. It was at this stage of the race that our good strategies and our pace paid off and allowed me to re-build the gap to Lewis and also to Robert, but we still need to work more because our opponents were pretty close to us, so it was not a very easy afternoon.”
The 27-year-old was also quick to underline the importance of qualifying in
F1 in 2008. Whilst he got a demon start off the line when the lights went out to vault past
Renault's
Fernando Alonso and slot in neatly behind his team-mate, had Massa begun the race from the front row of the grid rather than the second, he may similarly have got the drop on Raikkonen at the start and the final outcome could have been rather different.
