Ferrari could learn from Williams’ recovery from the doldrums of the British team’s past few seasons.
That is the claim of Felipe Massa, Williams’ new driver who moved to Grove for 2014 after a long Ferrari career. Undoubtedly aided by the dominant Mercedes engine, Williams has been arguably the surprise team of 2014, having finished a woeful ninth in the 2013 constructors’ table to now trail only the top three teams and proving a regular front row and podium challenger.
Initially, Williams seemed merely to be benefitting from superior horsepower in 2014, but now the FW36 is proving competitive even at twisty circuits like Hungary. “Now we are competitive in the other areas too,” confirmed Brazilian Massa in an interview with the latest edition of Italy’s Autosprint magazine. “It took a while but we did it. And there is still so much to improve,” he added. Personally, however, 33-year-old Massa is enduring a rough patch alongside the on-form Valtteri Bottas but he argues that his struggle is simply for a turn of luck. “The important thing is that we have a competitive car,” Massa insisted, “and that I am competitive myself. That’s what I care about.”
So when asked if he would have any advice to offer Ferrari if he was ever called back to race for his struggling former employer, Massa answered in the affirmative. “Yes, but I won’t say,” he insisted. “I don’t know if it will happen, but if one day I had to change teams again, I would take all of the experience that I have from Williams.”
Indeed, with Ferrari notably struggling in 2014, Italy’s influential La Gazzetta dello Sport reports that new boss Marco Mattiacci has headed into the summer break having identified the four major areas Maranello must focus on. They are the V6 power unit, speeding up development response times, coordination between the engine and chassis, and better balancing reliability versus performance.
Image: Williams Martini Racing
