Felipe Massa – The People’s Champion

Formula 1 drivers are international superstars adored by millions around the world but few drivers have been as well liked by fans, regardless of their team allegiance, than Felipe Massa.

Throughout his fifteen seasons the Brazilian came agonisingly close to glory in the sport but it nearly took his life in 2009. Massa’s actions have spoken louder than his words ever could. This is the story of a Formula 1 champion who never won the Driver’s Championship.

Felipe Massa entered the world of Formula 1 in 2002 driving for the Sauber team. The rookie recorded four championship points but his inexperience led to errors and the team dropped him for the 2003 season. Undeterred the Brazilian acted as test driver for Ferrari. His determination was rewarded as Sauber reinstated him for the 2004 season. He picked up 12 points in 2004 and 11 in 2005 for Sauber. His performances were noted by Ferrari who handed the 24 year-old a seat alongside seven time World Champion Michael Schumacher for the 2006 season.

Schumacher, racing in his last season before his first retirement, took the young Brazilian under his wing offering him invaluable advice. Massa said of that season with the German legend “I always saw Michael as a teacher, as a master, and I was not afraid to ask, ‘what are you doing here, what are you doing there?’

“I was asking everything I could from him. And he was telling me.”

Massa recorded his first pole position and Formula 1 win at the Turkish Grand Prix but undoublty the highlight of the season came in his home race. On 22 October, Massa won in Brazil making it the first time a Brazilian driver had won at Interlagos since Ayrton Senna in 1993. Massa finished the season third behind world champion Fernando Alonso and Ferrari teammate Michael Schumacher.

The 2007 season saw a new teammate for Massa in the form of Finn Kimi Raikkonen. The season got off to a difficult start for him with technical issues in Australia and Malaysia.  However, his season subsequently improved, as he won the Grands Prix of Bahrain and Spain, both from pole position, and finished third in Monaco. He won the Turkish Grand Prix again and led much of the Brazilian Grand Prix, until yielding the lead to teammate Kimi Räikkönen, thus securing Räikkönen’s world championship title. Massa finished the 2007 season ranked fourth in the drivers’ standing with 94 points.

2008 would prove to be the year Felipe Massa won the hearts of fans around the world. Despite yet another disappointing season opener down under things improved for the Brazilian as he took victory in Bahrain. He returned to the top step of the podium for the third season in a row in Turkey. Massa remained consistent throughout the season chasing McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton and victory in France saw him take the lead in the Driver’s Championship.

Further wins in the European and Belgian Grand Prix’s kept the Brazilian in the race for the Driver’s Championship which was a three way race between himself, his teammate Raikkonen and Hamilton. Podiums continued for Massa but Hamilton held a 7 point lead heading into the final race of the season in Brazil.

Massa remained optimistic stating “For sure we are in a difficult position but we know many things can happen in one race” and “Always when you play at home you usually play better”. The situation for Ferrari was: Massa was seven points behind Hamilton, meaning that the Brazilian had to either finish first or second to win, and Hamilton had to be outside the top 5 – the same position Räikkönen had been in a year earlier, when he won the championship.

Qualifying went well, Massa qualifying on pole, while Räikkönen qualified 3rd, just ahead of Hamilton. What followed next has gone down in the annals of Formula 1 history.

There was a rainshower just before the start of the race, and thus all drivers started on intermediates. Massa maintained the lead, and after 10 laps everyone had to change to drys on a drying track. Although the order was shuffled, Massa still led. He dominated the rest of the race, set the fastest lap and won by 13 seconds even though everyone had to change to intermediates after a late rainshower. Hamilton, meanwhile, struggled for pace. He was lying fourth for most of the race behind Massa, Alonso and Räikkönen. During a late shower, Timo Glock gambled on staying out on drys. He was fourth with Hamilton fifth. With three laps to go, Massa still led with Hamilton 5th.

If the race stayed as it was Hamilton would win the Championship. Then Hamilton, having made a mistake, was passed by Sebastian Vettel, demoting him to 6th. Going into the last lap, if the order stayed as it was Massa would have been champion. Massa crossed the chequered flag and thought that he had won the championship. Hamilton was still sixth as he came up to the second-to-last corner, where he passed Glock who had just been overtaken by Vettel as he was struggling for grip on his dry tyres, thus moving him into 5th place.

Hamilton crossed the line to win the Drivers title by a just a single point.

If Hamilton and Massa had tied points Massa would have won the title by virtue of 6 victories to 5 in the season.

Massa could have sulked and let the devastation take hold. Instead he stood as a leader and as a race winner, punching his chest with pride, pointing to the Brazilian flag and in a metaphorical sense picked up his crestfallen supporters trackside and watching around the world – all while fighting back the tears.

Massa had lost the world championship but gained a huge amount of respect and popularity as a sportsman around the world.

Nobody would know at the time but Massa’s defiant stand at Interlagos would not only be his final shot at the world championship but also his last win in Formula One.

Radical new rules saw Ferrari slip out of title contention for 2009 but Massa would then be hit by an even bigger test to the one he faced in Interlagos a few months earlier.

On 25 July 2009, in the second round of qualifying for the Hungarian Grand Prix, Massa’s head, though protected by his driver’s helmet, was struck by a suspension spring that had fallen from Rubens Barrichello’s Brawn, on a high-speed part of the track. He subsequently crashed head-on into a tyre barrier. Massa was airlifted to hospital in Budapest, where he underwent surgery in the area surrounding his left eye. His condition was initially described as “life-threatening but stable”, but improved rapidly. Massa was discharged from hospital the following week and returned to Brazil. After further tests it was decided Massa needed a titanium plate inserted into his skull to strengthen it for racing.

Many others would have called it a day and hung up their racing boots but Massa was determined to return.

As part of his return to Formula One Massa undertook a series of neurological examinations, co-ordinated by the FIA’s medical delegate, in Paris. The successful completion of these tests led to the announcement by Ferrari that Massa would return for the 2010 season.

Like in Interlagos, Massa didn’t shy away and upon a return to the car in 2010 started the season with consecutive podiums in Bahrain and Australia having lost none of his speed and spirit following the crash.

By now Massa was back in a No 2 role alongside Fernando Alonso and in no way was that made clearer than at that year’s German Grand Prix.

Leading the race ahead of Alonso, Ferrari made a highly controversial call (with team orders banned at the time) to code a swap of their drivers with the infamous ‘Fernando is faster than you’, line delivered by Massa’s long time race engineer Rob Smedley.

A distraught Massa eventually let the Spaniard by a lap later to aid his teammates’ title bid.

Although he didn’t go into a rapid decline at Ferrari, he would never trouble Alonso for pace at the team again across the next three seasons where he collected only three podiums.

A 2014 move to Williams seemed to mark a natural decline in Massa’s career however instead it served as a pick-up across the next two seasons. The Brazilian became a more regular fixture at the front of the grid including five podiums, the last of those at the 2015 Italian Grand Prix was to be his final top three finish in F1.

Towards the end of 2016, Massa announced his retirement and at what was expected to be his final home grand prix he retired after crashing out on the home straight.

Extraordinary scenes followed as during the race (under safety car conditions) Massa then walked down the pitlane draped in the Brazilian flag where he was greeted by his wife and son Felpinho.

While the trio hugged in the pitlane, Massa was applauded by the Mercedes and Ferrari garages in what looked like being a highly emotional farewell.

But Massa’s absence from F1 was nearly just as short as his world championship ‘reign’.

Nico Rosberg’s shock retirement left Williams in limbo once Mercedes poached Valtteri Bottas to fill the seat vacated by the new world champion at the Silver Arrows.

That offered Massa one last season and one last emotional Brazilian Grand Prix.

In 2017 there was to be no podium finish, but there was a gutsy drive to hold off former team-mate and rival Alonso for seventh place.

Perhaps more importantly there was an invitation for the Brazilian to step onto the podium with his son Felipinho to greet his supporters one last time before his second retirement from the sport at the final race of the season in Abu Dhabi.

Nine years on from the pain in the rain, Massa could finally stand on top of Interlagos as a deserved champion, maybe not as a Formula One driver, but at the very least the people’s champion.