Elation and surprise – Massa celebrates in the principality
The look on Felipe Massa’s face wasn’t so much joy as bewilderment. He’d first contested the Monaco GP in 2002 and had recorded one podium finish, but it was never a circuit at which he’d felt wholly at ease. Yet now, in 2008, he’d stuck his Ferrari on pole on a day when he’d hitherto looked unlikely to challenge. Rob Smedley was his engineer – and a few firm words played their part.
“After we’d started working together in 2006,” Smedley says, “Felipe told me, ‘Look, I’m not very good at Monaco – that’s just how it is.’ So after that year’s race, I did the usual analysis and came to the conclusion that he’d been talking bollocks. If you dug into the data, you found he could potentially run at a similar pace to Michael Schumacher. It was there, but he just hadn’t put it all together. It was the same the following year, against Kimi Räikkönen.