Massa urges Ferrari to improve reliability

The Brazilian suffered an unexplained problem on the grid at Silverstone last weekend that resulted in his car stalling.

Although he put in a brilliant recovery drive to finish fifth, he is well aware that he lost a good chance to close the gap on McLaren duo Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso in the title chase.

And he thinks missing out on those opportunities can be costly, especially since it appears that Ferrari currently appear to have the edge over McLaren in terms of pace.

"I think our car is very strong now," said Massa, when asked by autosport.com about the relative performance of Ferrari and McLaren.

"We have a good potential for the next races and the only thing for me we need to work very hard on is that we cannot have up and down races.

"McLaren are always there with both cars, and we cannot have up and down weekends like we have had sometimes - and at Silverstone as well. We need a 100 percent reliable car to finish the races."

Massa's frustration with the events at Silverstone was amplified by the fact that he felt he had such a strong car - and a strategy that could have even allowed him to beat eventual winner Kimi Raikkonen.

"It was a great race and I am very happy to do a race like that, to show what I can do even in difficult moments. But I am not happy to see the loss of points - that is the negative aspect.

"If you see, I had a very good strategy. I had two more laps (of fuel) than Kimi. Everybody was stuck behind Lewis, so I had a big chance to pass even Kimi. Two laps on a track like that, when the last two laps are when you do the best lap times, I think meant my chances were good.

"I had a great opportunity to fight for victory."