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Massa 'not happy' with season so far

Felipe Massa is hoping to turn his fortunes around in the second half of the season © Sutton Images

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Felipe Massa has admitted he is not happy with his season so far but is confident he can overcome the problems he is having with tyres during qualifying.

Massa has fallen 78 points off the championship lead at the last three races after failing to score a single point. He has been off the pace of Ferrari team-mate Fernando Alonso all season and has been out qualified by his opposite number 7-3.

"For sure I am not happy," Massa told the Ferrari website. "The beginning of the season was not like I expected. The first few races were ok, we got two podiums but then we didn't have good races. Especially in the last three races, we had three races in a row where something happened during the race and you cannot score points or cannot finish."

One of Massa's main problems during qualifying has been getting the tyres to hit their optimum temperature - about 100C - during his out lap. The problem is magnified when Bridgestone brings its harder tyres, like it did at the British Grand Prix, but Massa is confident he has found a solution.

"It was not the first time I had these problems, I had these problems in Barcleona and in Melbourne," Massa said. "This year we have very hard tyres and these tyres are difficult to get to work and get up to temperature. On tracks that were a little bit cold and not as abrasive, I was always struggling in qualifying with getting the tyres up to temperature.

"It's not so bad in the race; many places where we were struggling with in qualifying the race was good. The main issue was to have the right temperature and to have the right grip for the first lap of qualifying. If you don't have that then for sure you are struggling and you don't do the lap time you want. So it's something that I'm really pushing hard [to correct] and I'm looking forward to not having [this problem] anymore this year."

He said it had helped that Ferrari had upgraded its car with a blown diffuser over the last couple of grand prix weekends.

"In the last two races we brought some new parts to the car," Massa added. "I think they were a good improvement compared to the previous races. But it's also important that you keep a big motivation to keep the car growing and for the next race you have an even better car."

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.