Felipe Massa Quotes

When I entered Formula One in 2002 basically all I had was my talent, but now I also have the technical knowledge which enables me, together with my engineers, to fully exploit the potential of the car.

There's no better benefit than being out on the racetrack, learning what's going on with the track and the tire and all that stuff. To me, that's a big influence.

If you sign someone with the speed but whose time is over, they will set up the car differently and badly. You are 80 percent of the time going through corners, and you set up the car differently compared to someone who comes and wants to go flat out.

When you drive a car, either you manage it and feel it with the grip of the car, or, like me, you fix it on visual speed. If you do it through the grip, you lose it very quickly - because when the track changes, you can have scares. I do it visually, so if I am going too fast I fight to get the car back, but I do not do it by feeling the grip.

I think Formula One is - there's a lot of differences from track to track, grip levels, tyre compound, so you always have to press the reset button and work from scratch again.

When I'm doing longer runs I can be very consistent on the lap times because I know what the car is doing all the time.

How you go about testing is just very different to just being in the situation of qualifying, having to go out, having to nail the lap.

You have to let the car do the job and try to trust it, try to understand what you are doing, try to be smooth, and try to be incredibly smart to set the car up, because that is the most important part.

In sport there is never any moment that is the same as the other. I have been in Formula One for 12 years, and out of that I had one year with the perfect car.

F1 teams need a driver who will consistently set lap times that are 100 percent on the edge.

I hate to take compromises with a racing car. The more standard a car is, the more compromises you have to take.

I've always been attracted to cars, and driving is a completely measurable experience: if you qualify last on the grid, you're the slowest, and if you qualify first on the grid, you're the fastest. So no one can say you're slow if you're fast and no one can say you're fast if you're slow.

When I turned 16, I got my driver's license like the rest of my classmates, but I also got an extra present: a two-day practice session in a Formula Ford: my first open-wheel racing car and the first step on the ladder toward becoming a professional driver.

You know, it's always good to have seen a track before, just to kind of know where the little bumps are here and there, and just the general feel for the size.

Every track has its challenges, but Suzuka is a continuous test of a driver's skills, and I think that's what makes it so beautiful to drive.

A racing car is an animal with a thousand adjustments.

I've been told I have an aggressive driving style.

The trick at Le Mans is to get the car 'in the window.' Everything is critical: the tyre pressure, the brake temperature, and that means you have to push the car a lot to get it into the window - it's about getting everything to work right and getting the car to flow through the corners.

Formula one is very one-dimensional in terms of what we do in the cockpit.

People say I have an aggressive style, and sometimes I don't think that is all just me. I think it's partly because I watched Senna when I was young, and I thought, 'This is how I want to drive when I get the opportunity.'

We have moved away from basic racing, where you see how the drivers fight with the cars to their physical limits and then make mistakes - or not.

Preparation for Monaco is a little different: you definitely build up a little bit slower throughout the weekend and pace yourself. It's important to find the limit carefully.

In World Series, everything is a bit slower than F1. But each time I sit in the car, whether it is World Series or F1, once I am in the cockpit, I am mentally prepared for what the car is. I don't have to physically drive it to remember what it is doing.

It's true that driving an F1 car in testing is helpful, it's not that you learn everything.

In karting, you turn up and drive, look at the data and go home. But I like doing more, learning about the engines and how to make them go even better.