Felipe Massa secured his first podium of the season at the Spanish Grand Prix on Sunday.
The result completed an almost perfect weekend for Ferrari with team-mate Fernando Alonso going on to win his home Grand Prix.
The indications were there from the start of Friday practice , with Fernando Alonso topping the timing sheets in FP1 with Massa just +0.203seconds behind in second.
While FP3 saw Massa set the fastest time, but in qualifying it was the Mercedes who once again showed their strength in qualifying locking out the front row with Massa having to settled for sixth.
?I can?t say I?m pleased with this result, because I was expecting more after the times I did this morning. Unfortunately, in the third sector I had slight understeer which was costing me time, but all the same, I feel very confident because our car seems competitive. Now we must concentrate on tomorrow?s race, because it will be a long one and anything can happen. he told formula1.com.
The Brazilian was right to be confident as by lap 28 Ferrari were leading the race one-two. Massa had already worked his way past the both the Mercedes who were struggling on their tyres, while Kimi Raikkonen and Sebastian Vettel were also on different tyre strategies.
But while Massa might not have been in a position to challenge for the race, his tyre strategy was giving him the chance to grab a podium place and perhaps more importantly for Ferrari, take more points from the Red Bull of Sebastian Vettel.
?I am very happy with this podium. It was a really nice race and a fantastic result for the whole team. When you start from far back everything?s more complicated, but I managed to get away well and I immediately had a fantastic pace. On the first lap I pulled off a few overtaking moves thanks to the car being very competitive, which meant I could be aggressive, while at the same time looking after the tyres. Right to the very end, I thought it might be possible to fight with Kimi, but when I fitted my last set of Hard tyres, the ones we thought would be best as they were new, I had oversteer and began to lose the rear much earlier than I had expected. All the same, I am very pleased with our performance at this track.’
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