Former Scuderia Ferrari driver Felipe Massa has weighed in with his thoughts on the difficult situation for Ferrari in the first part of the 2022 Formula One season, urging Charles Leclerc to remain “patient” and most importantly to avoid a public “fight” with the Maranello team given some unfortunate moments in 2022 so far.
The start of the 2022 Formula 1 championship was very encouraging for the Maranello team and Charles Leclerc, who won the Bahrain Grand Prix ahead of his teammate Carlos Sainz and then went on to secure a second place finish and another victory in the following two events. However, his and Ferrari’s efforts then unravelled due to a series of reliability issues (with two DNF for the Monegasque driver as a result of engine problems), questionable strategic decisions from the Maranello pit wall and a few driver errors.
Ahead of the Belgian Grand Prix, the first round scheduled to take place after the summer break, Charles Leclerc is 80 points behind Max Verstappen in the Drivers’ standings, while Scuderia Ferrari will attempt to recover the almost 100 points deficit to Red Bull in the Constructors’ battle during the last nine races of the campaign.
Despite this downward spiral, Felipe Massa, who raced for Scuderia Ferrari from 2006 to 2013, pointed out the need for Charles Leclerc and the Italian side to calmly work through their problems together without public accusations and move ahead to continue the fight with Red Bull. The Brazilian believes that letting emotions boil over in the media would not bring anything positive for Ferrari, but rather do even more damage to their current F1 campaign.
When asked how he would be feeling in Charles Leclerc’s place after 13 rounds of the 2022 Formula 1 season, Felipe Massa explained:
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“Well, definitely, internally, he’s not happy at all. But you need to be patient. If you start a fight now, it will not help the team, but also Charles. We cannot forget also that [at the French Grand Prix] he made a mistake that gave away a very good possibility to win the race and score the right amount of points. Even if you’re not happy for the decisions, for mistakes that are happening, you need to fight in the right way, professionally. But not showing [those emotions] outside, because if you start to show [them] outside, it’s not helping both sides, even if Ferrari made more mistakes here. [A] fight, especially outside, will not help them.” – Felipe Massa added, in a recent appearance on Sky Sports F1’s Any Driven Monday programme.
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