Massa makes all the noise before Brazilian GP

The British driver Jenson Button heads to Interlagos for the Brazilian Grand Prix with a 14-point advantage over his Brawn team-mate Rubens Barrichello. The 29-year-old knows that a podium finish will give him the world title.
 
One driver who will not be able to influence the World Championship standings is Felipe Massa, who has yet to return to racing after a horrendous accident in July left him in an induced coma in a Budapest hospital. Massa will be back at Ferrari next season, alongside Fernando Alonso, and he seems intent on ruining their working relationship before it has even started.

Massa, who is known in the pit lane as a dignified professional, has been incensed by the 'Crashgate' scandal, when Flavio Briatore ordered his Renault driver Nelson Piquet Jr to deliberately crash at last year’s Singapore Grand Prix, allowing Alonso to win the race.

Massa had been leading at the time, but he finished out of the points after the introduction of the safety car because of Piquet Jr’s collision gave his opponents the chance to catch up and disrupted his race. Now Massa wants the result of the race annulled, and Lewis Hamilton, who finished third in Singapore, stripped of the world title he narrowly won.

Yesterday, in the latest of a series of increasingly confrontational public statements about Crashgate, Massa questioned Alonso’s integrity and accused him of knowing about the ruse. “In all, he is the least of the problem,” Massa said. “It was the team and Nelson — but Alonso was part of the problem. He knew. We cannot know it [but] of course he knew. [It’s an] absolute certainty.”

Later, presumably under orders from Ferrari to soothe the situation, Massa set out to clarify his comments, but did nothing to retract them. “What I’ve said is the outcome of a hunch I’ve had and is not based on any concrete evidence… What is certain is that this episode will not mar in any way the relationship I’ll have with Fernando when we will be team-mates.”

Alonso has shrugged off these accusations. “This is just a thing for the media and nothing really worrying for me,” he said. But, as Hamilton knows all too well from their time together at McLaren, the Spaniard thrives on confrontation. ·