Felipe Massa won’t just be fighting for his seat at Ferrari this weekend, he’ll fighting for any seat that is remotely competitive in Formula 1 next season.
In recent times, performing poorly in one of the top teams has resulted in a sharp slide down the F1 grid.
However if a midfield team were to take a punt on Felipe, then it could prove a shrewd gamble, and help reignite his career. But will they? That’s the big question.
So far this season a difficult car and the competitiveness of the field have made the gulf between Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa appear larger.
Felipe is struggling with what is a very unbalanced car, whilst Fernando is absolutely wringing its neck and driving around its problems. Generally the gap in qualifying between the two isn’t too different to last year, averaging four to five tenths (based on Q2 times), but with a field that’s much tighter than last year, it means more cars between the pair on the grid.
So far Alonso has scored 61 points whilst Massa only has two on the board after his ninth place finish in Bahrain. Therefore Felipe has only scored 3.28% of Fernando’s points total.
Ferrari said about Massa earlier this week that “everyone is expecting a change of gear starting right away with the Monaco Grand Prix.”
Stefano Domenicali added: “We absolutely need his points to also fight for the constructors’ title.”
For Massa to have any realistic hopes of staying at Ferrari he would ideally need to be scoring at least 60% of Alonso’s points. Therefore he is not even anywhere close at the moment.
Will Massa be sat next to Alonso in the same colour car in 2013? (© Ferrari).
It’s clear that as things stand there is no possible way that Massa can stay at Ferrari. If Ferrari want to have a chance of fighting for constructors’ titles they have to have two drivers scoring decent points.
If Massa currently had the same amount of points as Fernando, Ferrari would be leading the constructor’s championship by 13 points, rather than being 46 adrift.
Fernando may not want a team mate who is going to challenge him, but he wants someone who is capable of being right at the front with him, and taking points away from his championship rivals – something Massa has and is failing to do.
It seems that every day there is a new name knocking on the door to replace Felipe including the likes of Mark Webber, Adrian Sutil and of course Ferrari Academy Driver Sergio Perez.
The question is where would Massa go if the inevitable happens? Going on recent history the prospects don’t look too bright.
Heikki Kovalainen was comfortably beaten by Lewis Hamilton when he was paired up with him at McLaren. 2008 made pretty grim reading for the likeable Finn.
Whilst Lewis won the title with 98 points, Heikki was all the way down in seventh place with just 53 points. In 2009 Lewis extracted far more from a difficult car than Heikki managed.
When Kovalainen was dropped by McLaren at the end of 2009, he dropped all the way down to the back of the field with Caterham (formerly Lotus Racing) who were embarking on their first season in the sport.
Fisichella and Kovalainen. Two drivers who have fallen down the grid (© LAT Photographic).
Giancarlo Fisichella showed plenty of promise during his F1 career, regularly putting midfield cars in places where they didn’t deserve to be throughout his career. Many said he could be a champion if only he had a decent car.
Fisichella signed for Renault in 2005. In that year and in 2006, Giancarlo was comfortably out-paced by Alonso in both seasons – in which he won both his titles.
In a way Giancarlo is similar to Massa in that his reputation was up there with the best, until he was paired with Alonso.
After an average season for Renault in 2007 (although more down to the car than him it has to be said), Fisichella left the team.
Like Kovalainen he dropped all the way down to the back of the field, and joined the Force India team for the 2008 season.
In another example, Johnny Herbert drove alongside Michael Schumacher at Benetton during the 1995 season. Whilst Schumacher won the title Herbert scored less than half of Schumacher’s points total.
The following year he ended up driving for Sauber who finished seventh in the constructors’ in 1995. At least it wasn’t a drop all the way to the back of the grid.
These instances show that when you appear to perform poorly alongside your team mate (even if there may be a couple of reasons not entirely under your control), it’s a very hard sell for potential future employers.
Clearly there is very little chance of Felipe joining another top team if he leaves Ferrari. Lotus would be the only top team where there is the slightest possibility, but not whilst Kimi Raikkonen and Romain Grosjean are driving so well.
The third driver problem – all the teams now have someone waiting in the wings (© Sauber Motorsport AG).
Maybe Massa could go back and join Sauber where he started his career. However if Sergio Perez were to leave the team it’s more likely that the Mexican influence on the team would see Esteban Gutierrez promoted from reserve driver.
Then you have Toro Rosso who just run drivers from the Red Bull young driver programme, so no chance for Massa there.
Maybe there is a chance of a vacancy at Williams? If that were to happen then it’s very feasible that the highly rated test driver, Valtterri Bottas (who impressed in free practice in Spain), would fill the breach.
Out of the midfield teams that potentially only leaves Force India, if Paul Di Resta were to end up at one of the big teams next year. However they have Jules Bianchi as their third driver so again it could be a simple case of the third driver getting a promotion.
After that it’s only the bottom three teams left. It would be up to Felipe to decide if he had the motivation to go that far down the grid.
The F1 driver market is just so competitive at the moment. Let’s not forget that last year two talented drivers (and they weren’t the only ones) in Rubens Barrichello and Sutil were both left with no seat which surprised many. Sutil finished in the top ten of the driver’s world championship.
However Kovalainen and Fisichella showed that moving right down the field can help reignite a career. After a poor spell with McLaren Heikki’s credit rating has risen again with Caterham.
Over the last two and half year’s he has constantly driven beyond the car’s capabilities, and did something nobody has ever done, he completely annihilated Jarno Trulli in qualifying.
Fisichella also drove very well for Force India and even managed to get a pole position at Spa in 2009, and finished 2nd in the race.
Fisichella joined Ferrari, proving you can re-climb the ranks (© Ferrari).
His stock rose so high again that Ferrari drafted him in to replace Luca Badoer who had been filling in for the injured Massa. In hindsight he would have been better off staying with Force India after struggling with the KERS equipped Ferrari.
However both those examples demonstrate how a driver can recover from an uninspiring stint in a top team by producing good form at the other end of the grid.
When Herbert moved to Sauber in 1996 he scored a podium at the Monaco GP, then three years later won Stewart GP’s first and only race victory at the Nurburgring.
Watching recent replays of Monaco GPs on the Sky Sports F1 channel just reminds you of how great a driver Massa was before his horrific accident.
He insists that his injuries have nothing to do with his drop in form and his team would know if it did with all the data they have. The only thing then that is different from his career pre-accident is having Alonso as a team mate.
Take him away from Ferrari and Alonso, and put him in a team where he gets more love and attention, then maybe he could be rejuvenated much in the same as Kovalainen has been during his time at Caterham.
Jaime Alguersuari told Spanish Newspaper AS: “Being in elite sport does not, as many believe, depend just on your skills, it’s about managing the psychological, physical and technical elements. I am convinced that Massa is not now a slow driver, he can get back to being like Fernando (Alonso) and some days – why not? – faster.”
Has Massa’s ’09 Hungarian crash had an effect on his recent performances?
He added: “The only difference between the two is in the head; that’s the difference between good and best.”
If one of the midfield teams were able to help Massa rediscover his form pre-2010 then they could reap huge benefits.
However teams are now looking to younger drivers. At 32 Massa’s age counts against him. These days in F1, 32 is considered ancient.
Also in these difficult economic times teams are looking for drivers who bring money to the team.
Plus there are talented drivers like Sebastian Buemi, Jaime Alguersuari, Jerome D’Ambrosio and Sutil who currently don’t have a drive in F1 and all want to be back on the grid.
Therefore finding a drive for next year is going to be an almighty task for Felipe.
Ultimately he really needs to show some performance over the next few races to give himself a better chance of selling himself to other teams. There will be plenty of drivers fighting for the very few seats available.
If he were to be axed from Ferrari mid-season, and therefore not even be racing, his chances of finding any drive for 2013 will become even slimmer.
In this writer’s opinion, Massa could still do a brilliant job with the right team in the right circumstances with the right people.
However will anybody take the chance and offer him that new leash of life that he needs or will he have to go and look outside F1? You have to say it’s not looking that great for him on current evidence.
