• Monaco Grand Prix

Massa predicts better showing

Felipe Massa is upbeat ahead of the Monaco Grand Prix weekend © Press Association

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• Race:
• Monaco Grand Prix

• Drivers:
• Felipe Massa

• Teams:
• Ferrari

Felipe Massa is expecting an upturn in fortune when he takes to the track for this weekend's Monaco Grand Prix.

The Ferrari driver suffered from a lack of grip in Spain, where he could only manage to finish sixth behind Jenson Button's McLaren.

"It promises to be a complicated and exciting weekend for my second home race after Brazil, the Monaco Grand Prix," said Massa on his Ferrari blog. "Whatever happens, I hope it will be a better weekend than the one in Barcelona, which was a bit like my Chinese Grand Prix experience, in that I struggled from Friday morning to Sunday afternoon to find any grip from the tyres."

Although Massa said there will be no major changes to the Ferrari F1 for Monaco, he expects to be more competitive because of the tyre compounds Bridgestone is bringing to the circuit.

"This weekend, even if there will be no major changes on the F10, I expect we can be more competitive, mainly because Bridgestone is bringing the Super Soft and Medium tyres here and I much prefer using this combination. We had the same tyre choices in Bahrain, where I was much happier than at the other races, in terms of the grip levels I found from the tyres. I hope therefore that I will be able to exploit more of my car's potential. So let's see if the engineers can find something between the last race and this one, where we will not be using the new 'blown' rear wing, because on this slow circuit, you need the downforce more than top speed."

With more cars on the circuit during qualifying than usual, Massa said that getting the maximum track time to put in a good lap will be more important than ever on Saturday.

"Getting the car to work as well as possible on Saturday afternoon will be even more important than usual, because if traffic has always been a problem at this race, with four more cars out on track at the same time this year, and without wishing to be too critical, I would say six rather slow cars out on track, Q1 can become a lottery. No doubt we will use a different strategic approach to qualifying, maybe fuelling the car to do a few more laps than usual, to have a safety margin, so that you are not left without a competitive time in Q1.

"In fact, Sunday's race will also see traffic play its part, because even if strategic choices are different this year with no refuelling, trying to avoid coming out of the pits and finding yourself in slow traffic, could make or break your race. In the end, even if the race engineers will be monitoring the situation closely in the race, you need an element of luck to get it completely right."

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