In a cheery piece of bridge-building between F1's old guard and the 2010 newcomers, Felipe Massa has slammed the new teams, saying that Virgin, Lotus and HRT will "suffer" in the sport in their first seasons on track.
Ferrari have already made their own unhappy feelings on the new teams clear on a number of occasions, but it seems that the cheery flow of goodwill has now spread to the team's drivers, with Massa suggesting that the newcomers will be so slow as to cause a danger to the frontrunning cars.
"I hope they won't be a danger," Massa darkly warned in an interview with the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera.
"There are six/seven teams one second apart while those teams are four seconds behind. It's not good for the sport and not good for them: it's like two different series."
He concluded that: "They'll suffer. And we'll suffer too, when we have them in front of us during qualifying."
Lotus, Virgin and HRT have all made the grid, though only the first two have tested their cars, and even then have lapped some four to five seconds off the ultimate pace, though both have insisted that they will be closer to the pace at the start of the season in Bahrain.
Meanwhile, away from hating on the newbies, Ferrari have taken the time to expand their in-house Driver Academy, set up after the team were embarrassed by their lack of credible replacements for Massa following his accident last season.
With GP2 driver Jules Bianchi already signed up to the academy, the team have added Mirko Bortolotti, a GP3 driver, and Daniel Zampieri, who will race in FRenault 3.5 in 2010.
They have also added 15-year old karting star Raffaele Marciello, who will race in the Italian-based Formula Abarth next year.
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
