Despite admitting that he is delighted to become the first Brazilian to lead the
Formula One world championship since the late
Ayrton Senna achieved the feat in his penultimate season,
Felipe Massa insists that the honour isn't as
that great.
The
Ferrari driver moved to the top of the point standings for the first time in his career after inheriting French Grand Prix victory from ailing team-mate
Kimi Raikkonen, but maintains that his sights remain on the long game rather than short-term glory.
"It's nice [to emulate Senna], but my dream is not just to
lead the championship," he insisted, "My dream is to win the championship and I'm going to do the best I can to try to achieve that.
"It is always nice to lead the championship, a great pleasure, but, at the moment, we have won nothing, just some races. The championship is still 100 per cent open and we still have many races to go. We need to do our job race-by-race, thinking about the points, thinking if the win is good, otherwise second place is also good - or maybe third.
"We need to think like that about the championship until the last race and then we are sure if we did the right job or if we had the right luck or did everything right to win the championship or not. But it is always nice to be leading the championship. I was happy with second, [but] first is even better, so we need to take all the opportunities we can to be at the front all the time. Hopefully, we can stay in that position."
Massa is particularly mindful that his position will come under renewed threat, not only from his own team-mate, but also
Lewis Hamilton, who has now not scored for two races - and the Brazilian speaks from personal experience.
"Well, I didn't score in the first two races and I'm leading [the championship now]," he smiled, "Kimi didn't score in the last two races and he's completely fighting for the championship, so we cannot take anybody away from the fight at the moment. It's only the middle of the championship, and it's a long way to the last race."
