{"id":2452,"date":"2010-02-15T08:24:44","date_gmt":"2010-02-15T13:24:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/?p=2452"},"modified":"2010-02-15T08:24:44","modified_gmt":"2010-02-15T13:24:44","slug":"heidfeld-belongs-on-f1-grid-massa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/formula-1\/heidfeld-belongs-on-f1-grid-massa\/","title":{"rendered":"Heidfeld ‘belongs on F1 grid’ – Massa"},"content":{"rendered":"
Felipe Massa has expressed surprise that his former Sauber teammate Nick Heidfeld has been left without a race seat in 2010.<\/span><\/h5>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The pair shared the Ferrari-powered team in 2002, but while the 28-year-old Brazilian is now a title contender with Ferrari, 32-year-old Heidfeld has had to settle for Mercedes GP’s reserve driver role.<\/p>\n

“Why has no one offered Nick Heidfeld a good cockpit?” Massa is quoted as wondering to the Swiss newspaper Blick.<\/p>\n

“If I look at the (2010) field, Nick belongs in formula one but not as a spare driver,” he added.<\/p>\n

In fact, Heidfeld – having spent the past four seasons with BMW-Sauber – was a genuine contender for the Mercedes race seat until Michael Schumacher decided to return to F1 in 2010.<\/p>\n

The German told Auto Motor und Sport last week that he “could have signed” with other teams, perhaps Lotus, but opted instead to wait for Mercedes.<\/p>\n

It is rumoured that the option of staying at Hinwil was then ruled out by Peter Sauber, because Heidfeld openly regarded the post-BMW outfit as a plan-B.<\/p>\n

“I never said that Sauber was an alternative solution where I only needed to wave my hand and get a contract,” he insists.<\/p>\n

“My main focus was on being in a top team.\u00a0 There are several reasons why it didn’t work out that are partly obvious and partly not.<\/p>\n

“At McLaren I had a really good opportunity, and also at Mercedes, then things happened about which I had no control.<\/p>\n

“When I talked to McLaren, I was fully expecting that Button is staying with Brawn,” added Heidfeld.<\/p>\n

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

Felipe Massa has expressed surprise that his former Sauber teammate Nick Heidfeld has been left without a race seat in 2010. \u00a0 The pair shared the Ferrari-powered team in 2002, but while the 28-year-old Brazilian is now a title contender with Ferrari, 32-year-old Heidfeld has had to settle for Mercedes GP’s reserve driver role.<\/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":[347,5262,130,153,5284,98,114],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2452"}],"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=2452"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2452\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2454,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2452\/revisions\/2454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}