Q & A with Felipe Massa @ Sakhir (Bahrein)

Felipe Massa ended his test at Sakhir fastest of all, and despite interuptions on both his days in Bahrain the Brazilian pronounced himself happy with progress on Ferrari's F60.

Afterwards the 2008 world championship runner-up spoke to the press and autosport.com was there to hear what he had to say.

Q. What's your verdict from the session? Are you happy with how things have gone or frustrated that you couldn't do more running?

Felipe Massa: I'm happy for yesterday and a little bit frustrated for today. I think we lost a lot of mileage, but I'm happy with how things are going. Happy with the reaction of the car and how it is behaving, happy with the set-up work, the consistency and the reliability. I think we are in a good direction, but there is still a lot to do.

Q. How frustrating was it to come to Bahrain to test and still lose a day to the weather conditions?

FM: I saw this kind of weather here maybe once, but just in a morning and gone very quickly, not for the whole day. It's a bit of a surprise.

When you lose a day now, with not a lot of testing, it is a little bit frustrating. When you go in Europe and it's raining you lose a day, so it's the same.

Q. Do you feel you've made a big step forward from Mugello, the last time you tested?

FM: We made a good step on the set-up to find a bit more stability and I'm quite happy on that. We've learned and we understood so many things in one day that I'm sure we still have a lot more to understand, but I'm quite happy for the moment.

Q. A lot of people were complaining about very heavy rear tyre wear in the cold conditions in Europe. It seemed more consistent here yesterday, was it?

FM: It seemed much more consistent. I think from track to track you see a difference in how the harder tyre behaves. Here, the degredation was quite good and the tyre was quite consistent. I think from track to track there will be more and less degredation, depending on the layout and the asphalt.

Q. It's the first time you've run with other teams. Did you get a first feel for relative performance compared to Toyota and BMW?

FM: Yeah. I think yesterday we had a reasonably good day, and we didn't use the KERS. It was fitted on the car, just disconnected. We didn't use it because it had a small software issue at the beginning of the day and to change the KERS is taking quite a long time, so not to lose any time during the session we didn't use it. Today we used it.

I think not using the KERS and having good laptimes compared to the others was quite positive for us.

Q. The other big question at the moment for all the F1 drivers is the ongoing dispute with the superlicences. What's your view of things?

FM: I will not comment about that. I think it is something related to the GPDA. It's something that we are discussing but I don't really want to comment about it.

Q. Are you worried about the future of the sport, with fewer teams on the grid?

FM: The crisis is not good for the sport or anybody. It's important for the teams to have a better relationship and to find a way to spend less money. With spending less money there is more possibility for a new team or a team that is not in a good position to be in a good position.

We need to wait and see how the championship starts, if we really will have 18 cars. I'm not sure, I already heard from many areas that the team will race. So we'll wait and see, but I think in this crisis everybody is a little bit worried about everything.

Source: Autosport.com