04/04/2007
NEWS STORY
Although some believe that Ferrari is already heading to at least one of the 2007 titles, Felipe Massa is urging caution, claiming that nothing should be taken for granted.
"I have seen all the recent media speculation following Melbourne," he writes in his blog for the Italian team, "that this year's championship is going to be easy for Ferrari. It's not true of course, but I do have a good car.
"As usual, the important thing for this weekend, will be to put everything together," he continues, "all the elements you need to win and we do have those elements. But the competition is very strong and so it will be very difficult, but looking at what we did in Australia and also last week in Sepang, we are looking very strong ourselves.
"In the first race we managed to win but we had a reliability problem with the other car, so the obvious next step is to be in a position to have both cars at the front. And that's not easy, but we have a good team and a good package and everyone is working very hard. I am confident we will be very strong again this weekend.
"The car we will race in Malaysia is the same as the one we raced in Australia, with nothing new. So from this aspect with the same package, our performance level cannot improve. But in another sense, we have done more running with the car now, and so we have a much better understanding of the car and how it works and that is very important. After having to fight from the back in Melbourne, I am looking forward to having a race from the front this weekend."
The Brazilian suffered a gearbox problem in the second phase of qualifying in Melbourne and consequently failed to post a time, therefore qualifying sixteenth. However, the Maranello outfit subsequently opted to change his engine, with Massa starting the race from the pitlane.
Ferrari has already confirmed that ahead of this weekend's race there is concern regarding Kimi Raikkonen's engine, which developed a water leak in the closing stages of the Australian race, resulting in the team urging the Finn to slow his pace.