Massa relying on race strategy

Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton secured an all-McLaren front row, with Massa having to settle for a distant fifth place, behind teammate Kimi Raikkonen.

Massa is hoping things will be better tomorrow, but the Brazilian reckons it will not be easy to beat their rivals.

"For sure it was not a fantastic qualifying from us," said Massa. "Hopefully we can change some things for tomorrow and hopefully we can have a better result tomorrow in the race, definitely today McLaren was quicker than us.

"We will see the strategy they have and we will try and have a good strategy for tomorrow as well.

"We will also be thinking about the points and scoring as many points as we can. For sure it is not really easy, it is not what we expected for qualifying, but on the other hand we maybe have a different strategy and we maybe have a car configured for the race.

"Hopefully we can have a good strategy tomorrow in the race, but today for sure the McLaren was a bit better."

Massa admitted Ferrari simply did not have the same pace as McLaren, dominant winners of the Monaco Grand Prix two weeks ago.

"We start fourth and fifth, we are not 100 percent happy that is for sure," said Massa. "But let's try to figure out what is going to happen tomorrow in the race and do the best we can tomorrow in the race to change a little bit the result - not like today.

"We didn't have any problems like reliability problems, we were just not quick like McLaren, so that is the only problem we have. Hopefully we can change some things for tomorrow.

"We always need to be aggressive, we always need to go to attack, especially when you see McLaren in front so let's see tomorrow and let's try to have a good race."