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Q & A with Felipe Massa

Q. Many people before this weekend were saying that Ferrari were contenders for victory here, but it didn't happen. What do you think the reasons for that were?

Felipe Massa: I expected to be competitive here. Maybe more competitive than we are. But unfortunately things were a little bit different. We were missing a little bit of pace in our car, and if you are missing a bit of pace then you do not have the opportunity to win.

Q. How do you rate the chances now for Brawn?

FM: Well, I think they are in the condition to race and save everything and to finish the race in a consistent way. They have a great possibility. For me I said already before the first race that if the Brawn carries on like that then the championship is over, and I was not wrong. Many people were even complaining that I give up. I didn't give up but when you see the car is so much more competitive than the others, and if they don't do mistakes then they will win, easy.

Q. Can you shed some light on the discussions this morning with the Formula One Teams' Association (FOTA)?

FM: The indication is that we as drivers, we want to race for the best teams in the world and we want to race with the best drivers. For the moment, it is a nightmare what is happening in this fight. We want to know as drivers what was going on, and we wanted to give our opinion.

Our opinion is that we wanted to race in the best category - and the best category means the one that has the best technology, the category that has the best teams, the best drivers - and in a category that is a top category in motorsport. If we do what Mr. Mosley wants, then we will not be at the top of motorsport - we will be in a different level. We will go down a lot on the level of the top categories.

That is why we are together with the teams, we are together with FOTA. FOTA has eight teams and I hope that they can have a deal. I hope they can find a solution because we would love to carry on in F1. But if F1 is not possible because it is not F1 any more, then we will go to another championship.

Q. You said you were missing a little bit of pace today, but how did that manifest itself here?

FM: I think it was just a lack of speed because the car was quite balanced. Maybe it was losing a little bit of downforce because the first sector is where the downforce counts and we were a bit slower. In the second and third sector we were quite strong, quite reasonable. So I think we were missing a bit of downforce, but the balance of the car was okay.

Q. Mark Webber said that perhaps the organisers should have opened up the gates for free because of the lack of spectators and atmosphere. What was it like for you?

FM: I think when you come here and you see in the city that there are massive fans around, and you come here and see that there is nobody then you know that it is just too expensive. So we have to make it cheaper. We prefer to race at a track with cheaper tickets but a lot of people inside, because if they put down the price of the tickets it would be full.

That is also one of the issues we have, that it is too expensive. If you go in normal families, if you need to spend 1000 Euros for you and your two kids, you think about what to do. You say I prefer to watch on television, so for me it is clear.

Q. And will that be the picture for next year if Max Mosley gets his way?

FM: Well, we don't know what is going to happen in the future. We just need to express our opinion, and my opinion is that. It is what I said before.

Q. In terms of Ferrari pace, do you expect a similar pace to this weekend in Silverstone or do you feel what happened here was down to the track characteristics the way it rubbered in?

FM: Well, I expect maybe a bit better car in Silverstone. Today I think we went a little bit backwards during the weekend. I don't know exactly why. We had some ideas and for Silverstone we need to analyse everything and try to bring all the good pieces on the car - all the modifications to go back to the competitive car we had in Monaco and also Spain.

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