Felipe Massa praises "incredible" Ferrari team-mate Fernando Alonso

The Spaniard won three of the first 11 races and leads the drivers' championship by 40 points.

Massa believes that his team-mate has extracted the most from the Ferrari F2012.

"Fernando had an incredible first part of the championship," said Massa. "He did a fantastic job. Even at the tracks where we didn't have a competitive car, he was able to finish in a better position than he should have finished.

"He did a perfect job with the car that we had at some tracks. At some tracks, we had a good car but he had a perfect first part of the season."

Massa is aiming to get closer to Alonso in the second half of the year having struggled to match his team-mate so far in 2012.

He blamed bad luck for his failure to score more than 25 points so far this season.

"With me, in many, many races something has happened so I couldn't finish in the position that I was supposed to finish.

"Now I need to concentrate on going in the same direction that Fernando has done. That's the only thing I'm looking forward to."

Massa is also confident that Ferrari will be more competitive in this weekend's Belgian Grand Prix than it was in Hungary before the August break.

At the Hungaroring, the Ferrari F2012 was consistently the fourth-fastest car and Alonso described it as the "slowest" of the frontrunning machines, but Massa is hopeful that Spa will suit it.

He cited the pace of the car in the Canadian GP, which requires comparable downforce levels, as proof that the Ferrari should be stronger here.

"I hope that our car is more competitive than it was in Hungary, not just here but from here until the end of the championship," said Massa.

"We had a good car in Montreal so hopefully we can have a good car here as well. At Montreal, you don't have the high speed corners but here you have, but normally we have a good car in the high speed [corners]."