Felipe Massa's race engineer Rob Smedley believes the Ferrari driver is almost back to his best after a difficult start to the season.
Race engineer believes Brazilian is almost back to his best
Felipe Massa's race engineer Rob Smedley believes the Ferrari driver is almost back to his best after a difficult start to the year.
Smedley's words come in the wake of what has to date been a shocking season for the Brazilian, who has scored just 11 point in eight races.
Massa has struggled with Ferrari's latest car but his efforts are placed in sharp focus by those of team-mate Fernando Alonso, who has scored exactly 100 points more - the Spaniard also winning two races on his way to leading the Drivers' Championship.
Having struggled with the handling of his F2012 at the start of the season, Massa had to wait until the fourth race in Bahrain to score his first point.
However, with the Scuderia gradually improving their car as the season has progressed, Massa has improved of late, with Smedley now feeling that the 31-year-old is finally somewhere approaching his best.
Ahead of this weekend's British Grand Prix, Smedley told the official Ferrari website: "Right now, going into Silverstone, there is very little that Felipe is lacking for him to be back where he was in terms of driving and confidence in the car.
"You need things to go your way and at the last race we didn't have that. Going back to Canada, he made a little mistake at the start, which changed everything and in Monaco he was stuck in a train of traffic for 70 laps.
"However, in terms of his pace in those recent races and the way he was driving and his confidence, he is a different driver to the way he was at the start of the season. So, we are missing very little, maybe a tiny one percent to make it all start happening for us."
Ferrari head into this weekend's race on the back of Alonso's storming win in Valencia and Smedley is confident about their chances.
"I think our chances are good at Silverstone this weekend, even if it's no secret we still need to develop and have a quicker car," he added.
"In Valencia we didn't have the quickest car, but compared to the start of the year, we had a much improved car, which is down to a great job from the whole team.
"However, our car has always been particularly suited to high speed corners and Silverstone is dominated by high speed turns for almost two thirds of the track.
"I hope therefore that we can go and make the most of it; not only all the recent development work we have done on the F2012, but also the fact that our car is fundamentally good in high speed corners. That is why I feel we are in with a very good chance this weekend."
