• Belgian Grand Prix

Massa has faith in Ferrari updates

Felipe Massa: "We look in good shape" © Getty Images

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• Drivers:
• Felipe Massa

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• Ferrari

Felipe Massa is confident a new diffuser on his Ferrari at this weekend's Belgian Grand Prix will keep his team competitive.

Ahead of the four-week break, Ferrari won the German Grand Prix and was the closest team to the dominant Red Bulls at the Hungarian Grand Prix. It announced on Monday that it would run an updated version of its blown diffuser during Friday practice at Spa Francorchamps and then assess whether to run it during qualifying and the race.

Massa said he was positive ahead of the weekend but admitted the order at the front was too close call.

"Although it was a very quiet holiday, I am fully prepared for this weekend in Spa, as I kept in touch with the engineers, even though they were not working in the factory," he said in his blog. "We look in good shape, with some new parts coming as part of our constant development programme on the F10.

"It [Spa] is high speed, requiring less downforce than at many of the other tracks and fortunately, in the last few races, we showed that we have returned to being very competitive, even better than we had expected. But it is very hard to predict what could happen, as the small differences between the top teams means that performance has been very much track-specific in terms of who had the slight advantage over the rest. As usual we need to wait and see how free practice goes before knowing what to expect."

He said the run-in to the end of the season would be stressful as his team fights for the title but is already looking forward to it.

"There are only seven races left to go and I think that for the spectators and viewers at least, it should be a really exciting final part of the year, even if it might be a bit more tense for those of competing," Massa said. "But myself and Ferrari have been in this sort of situation before and we know how to deal with the pressure, by concentrating on the job in hand. Now we must build on the way we ended up just before the break, being competitive and putting ourselves back in the fight."

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