Felipe Massa has tipped his former Ferrari teammate to dominate Kimi Raikkonen at the great Italian team in 2014.<\/p>\n
Maranello marque Ferrari replaced the long-serving Brazilian with Finn Raikkonen, its 2007 world champion, over the winter, with Massa having to move to the once-great British team Williams.<\/p>\n
Ferrari justified the move on the basis that Massa couldn’t support teammate Fernando Alonso’s title-charging points hauls on a regular enough basis, but the 32-year-old thinks Raikkonen will also struggle alongside the Spaniard.<\/p>\n
Having tipped Alonso to beat Raikkonen while talking to the Italian press at Jerez, Massa explained: “Because he’s very intelligent and has already grasped the new rules.<\/p>\n
“He (Alonso) knows what he needs to do to be fast from the beginning,” he is quoted by Speed Week.\u00a0 “He combines talent with brains.<\/p>\n
“He really is clever, and that is what you need for rule changes as drastic as these,” added Massa.<\/p>\n
However, Massa said Raikkonen cannot be completely ruled out.<\/p>\n
“Maybe the new Ferrari will be better suited to Kimi’s driving style,” he admitted.\u00a0 “We’ll find out.”<\/p>\n
There have also been doubts about whether Alonso, formerly the clear number 1 alongside Massa, will be able to work harmoniously alongside Raikkonen, the last Ferrari champion.<\/p>\n
But team boss Stefano Domenicali said he was “very pleased to see” how harmoniously the pair had worked together at the Jerez test last week.<\/p>\n
Alonso also revealed that he spent some days at Maranello with Ferrari’s returnee recently.<\/p>\n
“We had some fun evenings,” he is quoted by Italy’s La Gazzetta dello Sport.<\/p>\n
“There will be a total sharing of data between us, which is what we are used to at Ferrari,” Alonso insisted.<\/p>\n
“Every day I had every lap of telemetry from Kimi, and he will also have mine.\u00a0 And what I’m trying here at Jerez, he will try in Bahrain,” he added last week.<\/p>\n
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