1. Massa aims to make an impact
Felipe Massa's father owns a small plastics factory in São Paulo, making bumpers for trucks. These items might have been more useful a month or two ago, when Brazil's latest and youngest Formula One recruit gave his Sauber mechanics a headache with frequent crashes and scrapes in testing. However, the 20-year-old, from a city where driving is considered a contact sport and the spirit of Ayrton Senna is evident on every freeway, has made a more positive impact since his March 3 debut in Australia. Massa will now start his home Grand Prix on Sunday as the only Brazilian -- of three on the grid including Ferrari's Rubens Barrichello -- to have scored a point so far this season. Despite being slower than his German teammate Nick Heidfeld, he finished sixth in Malaysia as Barrichello and others failed to last the distance. The youngster also got noticed in the season-opening Melbourne race when he qualified ahead of Heidfeld, fifth at Sepang last weekend, in a rain-hit session. "I think he's a future champion," retired French veteran Jean Alesi, who also raced for Sauber in a long and varied career, said before that first race. "I've watched him testing...and he's mad, fast and clever." Massa also shares a favorite circuit with Ferrari's four times champion Schumacher. "Interlagos is my home race and its going to be amazing to race there, but my favorite track is Spa," he said.
2. The Massas: Keeping it in the Family
For a long time, Felipe Massa wasn't having a good season. In contrast to his colleague on the Sauber Petronas team, Giancarlo Fisichella, the Brazilian was battling in vain. However, things changed when he clinched fourth place in the Belgian Grand Prix, which he described as the "best Formula One race of my career". Since then, he has caused quite a stir with his fighting spirit. Take last weekend, for example, when he came in eighth on home territory at the Brazilian Grand Prix. At emagazine, we reckon we've discovered the key to the miraculous turnaround: "family power". At Spa-Francorschamps, an hour before the start of the Belgian Grand Prix, two Latin-looking women were sitting at a little table in the Sauber Petronas motorhome. They were Massa's mother, Ana Elena, and his elder sister, Fernanda. Fernanda admitted that she can rarely conceal her nervousness during a Grand Prix, especially at the start. Despite Felipe's 14-year racing career, his family wasn't used to the pressure. His mother had never watched a race on TV before. Felipe's racing career brought him privileges. At family gatherings, he used to wait by the drive so that he could usher in the relatives' cars and park them himself. When he was just nine, at his father's suggestion, Felipe taught his elder sister to drive. He needed a cushion so that he could see over the steering wheel. On the racetrack, Felipe made rapid progress and worked his way up the various racing categories. And by the time he had won the Brazilian Formula Chevrolet championship at the age of 18, the home circuits had become too limited for him. So he crossed the Atlantic to take part in the Italian Formula Renault Series. He conquered Italy, winning the Formula Renault and creating a storm by notching up four victories in a row in the European Formula 3000 series. His talent didn't escape the notice of Peter Sauber. At the time, he was looking for a successor to Kimi Räikkönen, Sauber's biggest discovery to date, for the 2002 season. Felipe's father, Luiz Antonio, managed a factory that produced plastic components and looked after the Felipe Massa brand himself. He even hired a full-time secretary to help out with the work. But despite the merchandise selling well and sponsors showing interest, Felipe hadn't yet become a superstar at home. Brazilians are hard as nails in that respect, Fernanda said. Nothing less than an outright victory counts for anything, whatever field you're in. The Massas are appealing to a higher authority. For seven days, Felipe's parents walked the pilgrim's route to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. Naturally, they also prayed for their son along the way, said Ana Elena, a devout Catholic who worked for a São Paolo charity that looked after children with cancer and AIDS.
