Sebastian Vettel has stated he does not “understand” why Felipe Massa has struggled so much alongside Fernando Alonso at Ferrari.<\/p>\n
The 2012 championship looks set to be a head-to-head contest between Red Bull’s Vettel and Ferrari number 1 Alonso.<\/p>\n
But with Ferrari still yet to sign up Alonso’s teammate Felipe Massa for 2013, German Vettel has revealed some of his feelings about the situation inside the great Italian team.<\/p>\n
When asked by Folha de S.Paulo newspaper about Brazilian Massa’s lean years between 2010 and 2012, the reigning back to back world champion answered: “I don’t understand.<\/p>\n
“I really like Felipe as a person and respect him a lot as a driver.<\/p>\n
“Many people forget how much he has won and that he lost a title by one point to Lewis (Hamilton).<\/p>\n
“Had he been champion, people would talk very differently about him.<\/p>\n
“I don’t understand why he has suffered so much in recent years,” added Vettel.<\/p>\n
Massa, of course, has come back from his near-fatal Budapest qualifying crash of 2009, insisting that – physiologically at least – he is just the same as when he went head-to-head for the title against Hamilton.<\/p>\n
But also in 2008, Massa was the standout Ferrari driver alongside the then reigning world champion Kimi Raikkonen.<\/p>\n
And two years earlier, Massa was regarded as more than a match for his then teammate Michael Schumacher, who was ending his ultra-successful first career on a high.<\/p>\n
Vettel said: “With all due respect to Fernando, I think Felipe can be as fast or sometimes even faster than him.\u00a0 But then I don’t always understand why the difference between them is so great.<\/p>\n
“In the past Felipe has competed with very good drivers like Michael and Kimi and has always been fast, so I don’t understand.\u00a0 But I’m not a Ferrari driver and so I don’t know how things are there.<\/p>\n
“It’s just a shame that people forget things so quickly.\u00a0 In 2008 he (Massa) was seen as one of the best and now he’s not.<\/p>\n
“If his engine had not blown up in Hungary he would be a champion.\u00a0 I know I keep saying ‘if’, but that’s the way it is,” Vettel is quoted as saying.<\/p>\n
\u00a9 RIF | GMM<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sebastian Vettel has stated he does not “understand” why Felipe Massa has struggled so much alongside Fernando Alonso at Ferrari. The 2012 championship looks set to be a head-to-head contest between Red Bull’s Vettel and Ferrari number 1 Alonso. But with Ferrari still yet to sign up Alonso’s teammate Felipe Massa for 2013, German Vettel …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[3],"tags":[5262,130,149,93,5340,129,164],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16811"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16811"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16811\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16812,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16811\/revisions\/16812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}