Williams appears more than happy with Felipe Massa.<\/p>\n
In recent weeks, the star of the early 2016 ‘silly season’ has been Valtteri Bottas, who is strongly linked with a potential move to Ferrari.<\/p>\n
Also on Ferrari’s shortlist to possibly replace Kimi Raikkonen, according to Italy’s Autosprint, is frustrated Red Bull driver Daniel Ricciardo.<\/p>\n
But with Finn Bottas reportedly first in Ferrari’s sights, it could mean teammate Massa’s place at Williams is strongly firming up for 2016.<\/p>\n
Pat Symonds, the team’s hugely-experienced technical boss, told UOL Esporte he is happy with the 34-year-old Brazilian.<\/p>\n
“Before Felipe came to Williams,” he said, “I did not know him very well.<\/p>\n
“He’s one of those people who, if you see them in a restaurant and someone says it’s a driver, you wouldn’t believe it.<\/p>\n
“But when I see him in a racing car, it’s incredible.<\/p>\n
“I think the only time I had spoken to him for any length of time was when we were arguing in the stewards room at Monza in 2006.<\/p>\n
“I seem to remember accusing him of pretending not to speak English well when I knew very well that he could,” Symonds laughed.<\/p>\n
That was when Symonds was working alongside Fernando Alonso at Renault.\u00a0 Alonso went on to be Massa’s Ferrari teammate for four years until 2013.<\/p>\n
Symonds said: “I know very well how good Alonso is and so that gave me the confidence to know that this guy (Massa) was good.<\/p>\n
“It’s what I told him the first time we talked when he came to Williams: ‘You’ve beaten Alonso already, so we believe in you’, and I think that attitude – not only from me but also the rest of the team – made him relax,” he added.<\/p>\n
And Symonds said ‘relaxing’ was the key to Massa’s newfound return to confidence and form at Williams.<\/p>\n
“He’s no longer fighting a world led by Fernando Alonso,” said the Briton.\u00a0 “Now he’s part of the team.\u00a0 One day he’s beating Valtteri and the next he’s not, but it doesn’t matter — everyone is working to bring the team forwards.”<\/p>\n
\u00a9 RIF | GMM<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Williams appears more than happy with Felipe Massa. In recent weeks, the star of the early 2016 ‘silly season’ has been Valtteri Bottas, who is strongly linked with a potential move to Ferrari. Also on Ferrari’s shortlist to possibly replace Kimi Raikkonen, according to Italy’s Autosprint, is frustrated Red Bull driver Daniel Ricciardo. But with …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25384,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[3],"tags":[5262,130,5340,276,538,595],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29694"}],"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=29694"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29694\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29695,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29694\/revisions\/29695"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}