- Australian GP - Qualifying
Massa expects 'big fight' with Ferrari
Felipe Massa expects a tough fight from Ferrari in Melbourne for the final spot on the podium and says it would be foolish to write off Red Bull after one tricky weekend.
Ferrari showed big strides over the winter and took the fight to Williams in qualifying at Albert Park, with Felipe Massa only jumping into third ahead of Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen in the final moments of Q3. Massa ended last season on good form and he hopes Williams can pick up where it left off in 2014.
"It was a very tricky qualifying, especially when you have four cars fighting for very similar times all the time," he said. If you see the difference in the lap times between me, Sebastian, Kimi and Valtteri [Bottas], it's pretty small. But I'm happy, I'm happy I did a good lap.
"I feel that in the race we can do a good job. Definitely the fight is really tough with Ferrari. We have similar pace so it won't be easy in the race, but we are there. I am really looking forward to it and excited we can start the season well. Hopefully what happened in the last race of the season we can repeat straight away." Though Red Bull seems to be struggling with its Renault power unit in Australia Massa thinks the team is strong enough to bounce back.
"I think Red Bull is not really there at the moment, but I'm sure they will get there as they are really strong. Last year they finished in front of us and this year the rules are similar this year so I'm sure they are going to come. For the moment Ferrari is really strong and they made a big step forward compared to last year so I'm sure tomorrow we will need to be a bit more worried against Ferrari. But we need to keep our eyes open for Red Bull and even for others."
Massa says he managed to hook everything together when it mattered.
"It was the best lap of the day, the last one. It was not easy with the wind changing and it's easy to have the wind changing. It's so easy to have front locking on corners which I did not have on that lap, maybe I just prepared everything for the last lap and it worked. It will be a big fight tomorrow, with Ferrari especially, but I hope we can do a good job."
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