Saturday 4th April 2009
Felipe Massa has admitted that Ferrari made a mistake after he failed to progress from the first segment of qualifying.
The Brazilian will start the Malaysian GP in just 16th place after a terrible error of judgement. Rather than put in a 'banker' lap to make sure of his progress after completing just four laps in Qualy Three, Massa climbed out of the car with around five minutes of the session remaining - and then watched in horror as he was bumped down the timesheets into a lowly 16th.
"I went out straightaway on a new set of soft tyres. It was a reasonable lap but not a perfect lap because I ran wide on turn 14. I improved on my second timed lap and the team thought it would be enough to be in the top 15," Massa explained.
"Maybe I thought so as well to be honest, because when I got back to the pits I was fourth. I stayed in the top seven for a while but when I started to drop, it was impossible to go out again because there was no time to do another lap.
"I think that the track improved a lot. With the temperature going down, many people improved a lot and their cars improved a lot. We thought we had enough to get into the top 15 but it wasn't, so we dropped completely."
Massa also admitted that there was a sense of complacency in the team's decision not to try to improve on the time.
"Maybe the past is still very fresh in our minds so I blame everybody including myself," he said.
"I didn't think... I didn't believe that I was going to drop out of the top 15. I think after I did my qualifying lap, I could drop maybe to 11th or 12th but not 16th.
"I blame everybody. I blame myself, I blame my engineer, I blame everybody who was working in the pits and working on the lap times as well.
"I think it was a team mistake including myself but also it's a huge wake up call that now we need to use our tyres and we need to use all we have because it will be difficult to pass through every session."
Source : Planet F1
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