Felipe Massa: Says looking at F1's past won't necessarily provide the answers for the future

Felipe Massa doesn’t believe that simply making cars faster from 2017 will prove F1's silver bullet with the Williams driver calling for “intelligent” change to the regulations.

F1’s powerbrokers are continuing to discuss ways of improving the sport’s spectacle for forthcoming seasons after the Strategy Group last month agreed on a number of proposals to lower lap times, make cars more aggressive-looking and harder to drive for the season after next.

But Massa, who has seen numerous overhauls to F1’s sporting and technical regulations since joining the grid in 2002, has warned that the rule-makers need to be careful not to make overtaking even more difficult.

“I understand it’s interesting to make the cars quicker, but if you just put the car five seconds quicker and you see even less overtaking than there is now people will complain anyway,” the 34-year-old said.

“I want the cars as quick as we can, but the change needs to be intelligent. The change doesn’t need to be just to put the cars quicker on the track because if you are three seconds quicker on the television nobody understands.

“Not just putting a lot of downforce on the car. So the car will be quicker, but we will brake later so maybe the overtaking will be more difficult. The change needs to for what people want to see. People want to see competition. People want to see overtakes and fights. That needs to be the change.”

The drive to make cars faster and more challenging has been accompanied by claims that F1 was more exciting in the past, with the 1980s routinely cited as the sport’s ‘golden’ age. However, Massa reckons that particular era has been remembered through rose-tinted glasses.

“I remember when it was 20 years of Ayrton [Senna]’s crash, in Brazil they were showing all the races and I was watching most of the races he did. It was a lot worse than how it is now,” he argued.

“The difference in qualifying [from pole] was maybe one-and-a-half seconds to third [on the grid]. They were lapping the third every race. So the difference was a lot bigger than how it is now, but when you speak to the people they say ‘the past is amazing’.

“Go back and watch [that era] and then compare to now. People need to try to not look in the past without remembering so well.”

Massa on the move during the recent Canadian GP

Although the Brazilian acknowledges that cars did look harder to drive in the ‘80s, he says much of that was down to the poor quality of many of the tracks – and the FIA naturally won’t row back on its many safety advances of the last 20 years.

“The past looks more interesting also because the track was a lot worse. It was a lot bumpier,” Massa added. “So when you see the cars driving with the bumps it looks different and more difficult. But now everything is more for our world. Everything is more safe, the tracks are different. So I don’t believe the FIA will change the track to make it more dangerous because I don’t think it’s correct.

“When I see Kimi [Raikkonen] or Niki Lauda saying it needs to be more dangerous, I don’t agree.

“I just believe it needs to be better. There needs to be a very important study to make things more intelligent – not just to change because in Formula 1 we always have a lot of change. But maybe sometimes change is not changing anything.”

The Williams driver also urged F1 to follow successful examples from other sports over how to engage and educate fans.

“[F1 needs to] improve the show for the people. For example, I was watching the finals in [NBA] basketball this week and it’s amazing to see,” he said. “If you see one game Instagram is showing so many things for the people. We need that here as well. We need to see and understand things that people are doing in other championships and try to copy.”