Massa enjoys rare one-upmanship
Sunday 31st July 2011
Felipe Massa could not resist a wry smile at finally breaking a 16- race hoodoo over Ferrari team-mate Fernando Alonso.
For the first time since last year's Belgian Grand Prix 11 months ago, Massa out-qualified Alonso for Sunday's race in Hungary.
In achieving such a milestone, the Brazilian starts fourth on the grid and the Spaniard fifth, the duo separated by just 0.015 seconds.
However, it is not what Ferrari were expecting, after Alonso had topped the timesheet at the end of the first two qualifying sessions.
In the top-10 shoot-out, however, championship leader Sebastian Vettel grabbed pole position for the 23rd time in his career and eighth time in 11 races this year with Red Bull.
To rub salt into Ferrari's wounds, both McLarens are also ahead of them, with Lewis Hamilton lining up second ahead of Jenson Button.
For Massa, though, the monkey is finally off his back as he said: "What does it mean to me to be ahead of my team-mate for the first time this year? I am pleased.
"But what counts is being ahead of everyone, and I hope we soon get some qualifying sessions where we are the best.
"Here McLaren and Red Bull are very strong and will be so tomorrow.
"My only complaint is starting from the dirty side of the track. I know how penalising it can be here."
Alonso has readily admitted to "failing to do the perfect lap", although was happy to acknowledge Massa's achievement.
"Third place was within our grasp, and it would have been a great place from which to start the race," said Alonso.
"But others did better than us, including my team-mate who drove a nice lap.
"All the same, better fifth than fourth as it means at least I start from the clean side of the track.
"It just seems that when it's time for Q3, Red Bull has a magic button that suddenly makes them go faster.
"But then it seems the button switches off in the race."
Because of that Alonso believes he has a shot at a podium, knowing a topsy-turvy race could unfold.
"We will need to maintain a good pace, doing a perfect job at the pit stops, of which I think there will be a lot, maybe three or four, because tyre degradation is significant," added Alonso.
"It will also be important to get the timing of the stops right. I reckon anything could still happen and it will be a very open race."
Credit: ESPN STAR (www.espnstar.com)
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