Why Massa lucked in for one more year

An hour or so after the finish of this year's Malaysian Grand Prix, a small handful of journalists gathered in Ferrari's hospitality unit to hear from Felipe Massa. Fernando Alonso had just taken a shock victory in the lead Ferrari, so few were interested in what that day's 15th place finisher had to say about life.

He had failed to score for the second race in succession. Coming off the back of a poor 2011 campaign, questions were justifiably being asked about his suitability for a Ferrari seat. Granted, as Massa himself has pointed out, he'd been the subject of such questions for a sizeable proportion of his career with the team, but this was different. Never before had he struggled so much for so long.

The driver who sat in that room after one of the least spectacular performances of his grand prix career wasn't the same one who impressed so much during 2007 and 2008. He came within seconds of the title in the second of those campaigns and it's often forgotten that, although some misfortune in the second half of the season put him out of contention, Massa was also a credible contender for much of the first.

That driver, the one who had sensationally passed Lewis Hamilton, brakes locked, for the lead around the outside of the first corner at the Hungaroring only to have his richly-deserved win robbed of him with a last-gasp engine failure, was not the same one who sat in front of us that day. Neither is the one who finished an excellent fourth in Korea on Sunday.

The first few questions focused on why he struggled relative to his team-mate and whether he took any solace from Alonso's win. Unsurprisingly, Massa wasn't greatly comforted. I then weighed in with a harsh question, but one that needed to be asked.

Massa at Sepang earlier this year © LAT

The question: "Do you feel that your performance over the last 12 months is up to the standard expected of a Ferrari driver and, if it isn't, what can you do to improve the situation?"

Massa's response was unconvincing. He said the right things - and did so with typical professionalism - but the confidence wasn't there. He didn't emphatically answer the first part of the question, but his demeanour gave him away. He knew he was under-delivering dramatically, and had been for some time.

"We need to try to find the problems and improve the situation," he replied. "That is the work that we need to do and that's what we're going to do."

Seven months on and things have improved (they could scarcely have got worse). The first half of the season was patchy, with Bahrain, Monaco, Silverstone and Hungary the four weekends where Massa managed to string together a very creditable weekend's work. But in the five races since the break, he has kept up a decent level of performance as his confidence in the car has grown.

You can make a convincing argument that Massa should have beaten Alonso in the race in Korea and that a race earlier he ended a podium drought stretching back to Korea 2010. Since the break, Massa is second only to Sebastian Vettel in terms of points scored. No matter how you spin it, that's a good run.

But in a season of 16 race weekends, he has been up to scratch in only around half of them. While the trend is for improvement, there are many drivers whose performance would look impressive using only half of 2012 as a sample set. Massa is fortunate to retain his place in such a strong team and the fact is that no other outfits would be seriously interested in signing him (unless he could raise a budget) were he released.

For various reasons, few of them seriously connected to whether he was the best available driver, Ferrari was keen to retain him for one year. All Massa had to do was string together a handful of decent weekends to ensure that the decision didn't appear too absurd.

The elephant in the room is his injury in qualifying for the 2009 Hungarian Grand Prix. Some don't like to cite this as a possible reason for the Massa of today being a shadow of the one that starred in 2008.

Massa ended his podium drought at Suzuka © LAT

There are other factors, notably the fact that the cars have changed and that Alonso is a team-mate who puts a lot of effort into putting his support act firmly in his place.

The argument that he was hit psychologically by having to hand Alonso victory in the 2010 German Grand Prix to Alonso also holds water. Worst of all, it was a year to the day since his accident.

Some consider it distasteful to factor in the injuries and mistake the fact that it's grossly unfair that such a terrible misfortune should have made him less of a driver with the possibility that it has done. After all, he would far from be the first.

It's hard to accept that Massa would have struggled so much over the past three years had he seen out the 2009 campaign unscathed. After all, even with other mitigating factors taken into consideration, the current Massa isn't in the title-challenging class and he demonstrably was four or five years ago.

So what are we left with? Massa still struggles for consistency, although nobody who watches the way that he drives could level the accusation that there's any problem with his car control or willingness to attack. He's sometimes quick, too often underachieves in qualifying and despite being impressive on first laps, has had a few races where his race craft has let him down.

He's still capable at F1 level, but is hardly top-team material. The only caveat is that it can take a seriously long time to recover fully from any kind of head injury and it's not impossible that he could still be improving.

The bottom line, though, is that you have to question whether Ferrari gives a damn about the constructors' championship given the refusal to sign alternative drivers.

The other options were plentiful. The likes of Nico Hulkenberg, Paul di Resta, Sergio Perez and Heikki Kovalainen, to name but four of the drivers who were available to Ferrari would all, over the course of a season, likely do a better job than post-2009 Massa and a few of them would have been capable of getting consistently closer to Alonso.

Alonso has overshadowed Massa at Ferrari © LAT

Others would likely have been heavier-scoring number twos as, for all his recent good form, Massa still has just 81 points to Alonso's 209. He has picked up only 39 per cent of his team-mate's points, which remains the worst record between team-mates among the nine point-scoring teams.

Ferrari should have replaced him, but decided against it, in part because Alonso sees greater benefit in a number two kept very much in his place than a strong support player. He might feel a little differently were he to need his team-mate's help in a title decider, though.

After all, had Massa been well placed enough in Abu Dhabi 2010 to pit and re-emerge ahead of early-stopper Mark Webber, Alonso might have stayed out longer and gone on to clinch the crown. A very speculative comment, maybe, but given Sebastian Vettel is going to have Mark Webber in the other Red Bull, it illustrates a weakness.

And please don't cite Ferrari's talk about their confidence in him as evidence that they see him as a true top-liner. It has an eerily familiar ring to it, after all.

Ferrari wants Massa as a number two and it's still debatable as to whether he will do that job as well as the team needs him to.

Massa is a genuinely likable driver, one who always answers even harsh questions graciously and as informatively as he can. It's hard to imagine a victory would be more popularly-received in the paddock than another one for Massa, but nobody is holding their breath for a return to top form on anything other than a sporadic basis.

In his pomp, Massa was a far better driver than those who argue that he somehow won 11 grands prix by luck give him credit for. But those days are gone. All he can do now is concentrate on being a good number two over the whole 2013 season.