{"id":19302,"date":"2013-09-18T07:01:21","date_gmt":"2013-09-18T11:01:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/?p=19302"},"modified":"2013-09-18T07:01:21","modified_gmt":"2013-09-18T11:01:21","slug":"leaving-ferrari-the-best-move-for-massa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/formula-1\/leaving-ferrari-the-best-move-for-massa\/","title":{"rendered":"Leaving Ferrari ‘the best move’ for Massa"},"content":{"rendered":"

Leaving Ferrari could be the best thing for Felipe Massa.<\/p>\n

\"Felipe-Massa-car-2\"That is the opinion of a growing number of figures, after the Italian team decided to replace the long-serving Brazilian with Kimi Raikkonen for 2014.<\/p>\n

“Our relationship with Felipe was clear,” Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo told Italy’s La Gazzetta dello Sport this week.<\/p>\n

“He needed results, as we do.\u00a0 He got them, but not with consistency.<\/p>\n

“He did some beautiful races but could not repeat them.<\/p>\n

“Last year, we missed his points in the constructors’ championship.\u00a0 The change will do him good,” added Montezemolo.<\/p>\n

Having not won a drivers’ title since 2007 with Raikkonen, Ferrari’s decision to pair the Finn with ‘number 1’ Fernando Alonso for the next couple of campaigns is a clear sign of intent.<\/p>\n

But according to Massa’s friend, countryman and former rival Luciano Burti, leaving Ferrari could also be the best thing for the 32-year-old.<\/p>\n

“If he (Massa) had continued at Ferrari, he would have stayed with the same beat as now, which is not ideal,” said the former Jaguar and Prost driver.<\/p>\n

“So if he gets a relatively good car for next season – which is not easy because there is only Lotus – it will be the best thing for him.<\/p>\n

“I believe it would be a fresh start for him,” Burti told Brazil’s Totalrace.<\/p>\n

It seems that even the Massa camp has a similar view.<\/p>\n

Massa has already said that, for the balance of his Ferrari career, he will be fighting for his own interests, not those of the team or Fernando Alonso.<\/p>\n

His manager, Nicolas Todt, said constantly having to serve a teammate “destroys the instincts of a driver”.<\/p>\n

“We want to stay in formula one,” Todt told O Estado de S.Paulo newspaper.\u00a0 “But he has to be at a team where he has freedom.<\/p>\n

“Then, I think that we would see the same Felipe who in 2008 lost the title by one point to a driver on the level of Lewis Hamilton,” he added.<\/p>\n

\u00a9 RIF | GMM<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Leaving Ferrari could be the best thing for Felipe Massa. That is the opinion of a growing number of figures, after the Italian team decided to replace the long-serving Brazilian with Kimi Raikkonen for 2014. “Our relationship with Felipe was clear,” Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo told Italy’s La Gazzetta dello Sport this week. “He …<\/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":[2120,3],"tags":[5262,130,93,5340,154,148,4644,1674],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19302"}],"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=19302"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19302\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19303,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19302\/revisions\/19303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}