Ex-Formula 1 driver Felipe Massa has slammed former team-mate Fernando Alonso for putting him in a “difficult mental condition”, which resulted in the Brazilian driver “making mistakes”.
Massa partnered Alonso at Ferrari from 2010-2013, before he left the Maranello-based squad to join Williams in 2014, in what was the final move of his career.
The Brazilian was already a Ferrari driver when Alonso made the move from Renault to replace Kimi Raikkonen, with Massa having first raced for the Italians in 2006 alongside Michael Schumacher.
Massa was far from his best when alongside Alonso, with the Spaniard having out-qualified the 42-year-old 59 times in the space of 77 races.
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When it came to their finishing position, Alonso finished ahead of Massa 65 times, whilst Massa only managed to defeat the two-time World Champion on 12 occasions.
Alonso was very much the leader it seemed at Ferrari, with the Italians having done everything in their power to keep him happy.
This involved using team orders at Hockenheim in 2010, where they instructed Massa to give the race lead to Alonso, who then went onto win the race.
Ferrari even lied to the media about Alonso’s involvement with the team and the effort he put in.
Massa has admitted that Alonso decided one day that he didn’t want to complete any simulator work anymore, as he felt that it “doesn’t help anything”.
This left Massa to do it all, yet Ferrari’s former president Luca di Montezemolo praised the Alonso for “how much he works” in the simulator “every week”.
The 2008 Vice-Champion has criticised Alonso for “using his power” to get everything his way at Ferrari, something Massa believes split the team.
“I wanted to be in front of him, him in front of me,” Massa told the Track Limits podcast.
“I think Fernando, I never had any problem with him outside of the car apart from the fight that we had in 2007, I never had any problem with him. I always got on well with him as a person.
“But he was not what he was telling me. He was not what he was telling the team.
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“He was always a typical way of working, using his power. He has a lot of power and he was trying to get the power he had to do everything on his side. And I think that was splitting the team in the middle.
“So this was not really great the way he was working, but he’s like that, you know? And I think the only problem with splitting the team in the middle was not good for the team.
“I think that to beat him you need to be on your day, but I was on my day in many races, but something happened that he was putting me in the difficult mental condition that I was making mistakes or maybe that something was happening that it was not great.”