Felipe Massa has confirmed he is to leave Ferrari at the end of the season.
Farewell Felipe: Massa's career at FerrariThe Brazilian will end his Ferrari career as their second longest-serving driver in history, after Michael Schumacher, having joined the team as a race driver in 2006.
By then Massa had already been on Ferrari's books for five years having come to their attention during a dominant Euro Formula 3000 title-winning campaign in 2001, although it was with customer team Sauber that the then 20-year-old made his F1 race debut the following year.
After a season in a test driver role at Ferrari, Massa returned to a race seat at Sauber for 2004-2005 before being recalled to Maranello to replace countryman Rubens Barrichello alongside Schumacher in what turned out to be the German's final season before his first retirement.
Having performed increasingly competitively alongside first Schumacher, and then the incoming Raikkonen, Massa emerged as Ferrari's lead runner in the 2008 campaign and was only denied the World Championship by Lewis Hamilton in the astonishing closing moments of his home Brazilian GP.
In 2009 the Brazilian sustained serious head injuries in qualifying at the Hungarian GP after an errant spring from the car ahead pierced his crash helmet, and although he missed the remainder of the season, Massa made a remarkably swift recovery and returned to action alongside new arrival Alonso the following season.
But while he outqualified his new team-mate at the first attempt on his return, Massa was swiftly cast into Alonso's shadow and since then has scored less than half the number of points collected by the Spaniard and failed to win a race, whereas Alonso has claimed 11 victories and been pipped to two world titles.
