Massa Can Beat Alonso At Ferrari

(Photo by Clive Mason/Getty Images)

As we approach the end of the 2009 Formula One season, and Jenson Button crawls his way to the title, I can’t help thinking ahead to next year in what promises to be a classic.

Now, I was going to write a prediction of Massa being world champion next year, but with the recent news that Alonso will be driving for them next year instead of Kimi, it does complicate the situation. 

I believe Alonso will come in to the Scuderia looking to dominate Massa from the outset.  I also believe Kimi’s likely move to McLaren will revitalise him and this will push Lewis Hamilton to the supreme highs he is more than capable of and start to set him up for a few years of domination.  However, all of this doesn’t change my mind.

As the teams arrive in Brazil, there will still be four drivers in it.  It’s the teams of old once again battling it out at the top as they have done since they first properly locked horns in the days of James Hunt and Niki Lauda.

For Ferrari, Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa have fought back to be in contention for the world title and have now developed into the best car on the grid.

Over in the silver corner, Lewis Hamilton has lead the championship for the last half of the year but his team mate Kimi Raikkonen has pressured him all year to commence the final battle level on points.

The four of them lock out the front two rows and as the engines roar and the lights go out, there can only be one winner.  Massa on pole, he does what he does best, producing another level of performance that people still continue to doubt he has, which the other ‘better’ drivers cannot match. He crosses the line in first, making him Brazil’s first champion since Ayrton Senna.

And there could be no more deserving of a championship, or a better story than Felipe Massa’s fight to the crown.  And I’m not talking about a rags to riches story either, or his accident in qualifying for the Hungarian Grand Prix.  It is simply a story about a driver who has kept on fighting and more importantly improving.

He did a thing that many Formula One drivers find very hard to do; he listened and took advice from those around them, including a certain seven time world champion. It’s been fascinating seeing him smooth off the rough edges that blighted his early career and take the opportunities that have been offered to him.

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