A member of Felipe Massa’s management team has denied as “fantasy” reports the Brazilian has penned a five-year Williams contract.<\/p>\n
Alessandro Aluni Bravi, who according to O Estado de S.Paulo newspaper works with Massa’s manager Nicolas Todt, denied the report that appeared on a Brazilian website on Thursday.<\/p>\n
“Felipe has already expressed that racing with Williams in 2014 would be a good option,” he said, “but still there is nothing certain.<\/p>\n
“Firstly,” Bravi added, “who signs a five year contract today in formula one?<\/p>\n
“Sebastian renewed for two seasons, Lewis has a three-year commitment with Mercedes.\u00a0 But this (report about Massa) is information without origin and it could only (adversely) affect the negotiations.”<\/p>\n
Bravi continued: “Williams is just one of the scenarios for us.\u00a0 We have talked with Lotus, Force India and Sauber as well.<\/p>\n
“But we have not got to the level of discussing the contract term and details of how our relationship with the team would be,” he added.<\/p>\n
However, the rumour goes that if Massa does arrive at Williams, his sponsor Petrobras would replace PDVSA, the Venezuelan oil company, as well as Pastor Maldonado.<\/p>\n
Speaking in India, Maldonado did little to quell the speculation.<\/p>\n
“If I decide to leave,” he is quoted by Spain’s EFE news agency, “someone has to come to the team and I would wish Felipe well, to continue (in F1).<\/p>\n
“It is not yet decided, so let’s see what happens in this final part of the season,” Maldonado added.<\/p>\n
Williams’ deputy team boss Claire Williams, however, played down the Massa link.<\/p>\n
“We are not in a position to announce our driver lineup, so I can’t comment on these rumours,” she told Brazil’s Totalrace.<\/p>\n
“It is pure speculation,” added Williams, who did acknowledge Massa’s skills, history and experience.<\/p>\n
“Felipe has a great history in the sport,” she said.\u00a0 “He is an experienced driver and Williams is always interested in talents such as Felipe.<\/p>\n
“But at the moment we have two drivers under contract who are doing a great job for us,” Williams added, also referring to Finnish rookie Valtteri Bottas.<\/p>\n
But she fanned the flames when she referred to Williams’ own great history of working with Brazilian drivers, such as Nelson Piquet, Ayrton Senna and Rubens Barrichello.<\/p>\n
“Historically, we’ve had some great Brazilian drivers and we always get on well with them,” said Williams.<\/p>\n
“I think it has to do with the passion that the two sides have for the sport — it makes a good fit.”<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Williams played down a sporting corruption scandal in Venezuela that some say could affect Maldonado’s sponsorship backing.<\/p>\n
“We have a contract with PDVSA,” she said, “and to our knowledge, this investigation has nothing to do with us.”<\/p>\n
\u00a9 RIF | GMM<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A member of Felipe Massa’s management team has denied as “fantasy” reports the Brazilian has penned a five-year Williams contract. Alessandro Aluni Bravi, who according to O Estado de S.Paulo newspaper works with Massa’s manager Nicolas Todt, denied the report that appeared on a Brazilian website on Thursday. “Felipe has already expressed that racing with …<\/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":[4696,434,5262,130,5340,1674,595],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19678"}],"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=19678"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19678\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19679,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19678\/revisions\/19679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}