Massa delighted with return to form

After seeing rivals McLaren dominate the last three races, revisions made to the F2007 in time for this weekend's Magny-Cours race appeared to have improved the car's performance and helped the team to their strongest qualifying showing since the Spanish Grand Prix.

"For sure it is definitely a good weekend for us," said Massa. "We prove already in (testing at) Silverstone that what happened in the last few races was a bit opposite to what we faced in the last test.

"We came here and we found a similar car to last week. That is encouraging and it looks like we are back fighting.

"For sure it is close. If you look at the difference in laptimes, it was very close between all three, but it is good to be back in the fight and we are happy we can have a good car tomorrow."

Massa's pole position time was under threat from Lewis Hamilton on the Briton's last run, and the Brazilian said he had expected to go quicker.

"My first try I just managed to do quite a good lap, but then I expected to improve a little bit on the second try.

"But especially on these tyres, you drive so much on the limit that if you overdrive you lose one or two tenths and you cannot recover again. So the last try is the one where if you can make everything perfect you can make a good laptime, but if you overdrive a little bit you can make some mistakes."