Felipe Massa reveals the team-mate he ‘suffered a lot more with’ than Michael Schumacher
Ferrari’s Felipe Massa pulls on his overalls at the 2008 Brazilian Grand Prix.
Felipe Massa admitted he “suffered a lot more” while driving with Fernando Alonso as his team-mate than when Michael Schumacher was alongside him at Ferrari.
Massa joined the Scuderia from Sauber in 2006, learning from the seven-time World Champion in his final season with the team before partnering Kimi Raikkonen the following year, but he admitted it was his stint with Alonso that was tougher.
Felipe Massa on difficulty of working with ‘number one’ at Ferrari
Massa was an up-and-coming star within Formula 1 when he joined Ferrari in place of Rubens Barrichello, taking two race victories in his first season as a Ferrari driver before later mounting his closest title challenge in 2008.
After returning from his life-threatening facial injury he sustained at the 2009 Hungarian Grand Prix, Fernando Alonso was in the other cockpit at Ferrari, and while it was a remarkable feat in itself for Massa to come back from such an impact, the two-time World Champion quickly established himself as the quicker of the two within the team.
This was best exemplified by the now-infamous radio message from Massa’s race engineer, Rob Smedley, asking him to move aside from the lead of the 2010 German Grand Prix for Alonso with the words: “Fernando is faster than you”.
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Discussing life at Ferrari and what he learned from Schumacher with UOL Esporte, Massa explained that the seven-time World Champion’s influence was such that the Scuderia would do anything for him, but also admitted that his time with Alonso was tougher to handle.
“It’s not easy because you know you’re alongside the number one [Michael Schumacher] and everything the power a driver like that has is very big within the team,” said the Brazilian.
“If he decides to do something, the team will do it. Then at work, it’s not easy and sometimes you have to swallow some things which are not easy.
“But I think that at the time, I suffered a lot more with [Fernando] Alonso than with him for example.
“With him [Schumacher], it was a very big situation where Ferrari was investing in a young man like me and also, he is at the end of his moment in Formula 1 and also at Ferrari.”
Massa would partner Alonso with the Scuderia for four seasons, becoming one of the team’s longest-serving drivers in the process before he departed for Williams in 2014, and he remains an active racer in Brazilian stock cars to this day.
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