Felipe Massa:
“A very difficult qualifying but, overall, I am reasonably happy. It’s true it could have been better, but it could also have been much worse. I am ahead of my main rivals in the fight for the championship and I still have a good grid position therefore. Today, especially in Q2, conditions were very critical with aquaplaning at various points and visibility was also poor, especially in traffic and the situation got worse and worse. I still managed to improve my time and make it through to Q3, which was important. Tomorrow I must try and finish as high up the order as possible and get some points. It will be a very tough race, but we can rely on a very competitive car.”

His title hopes may have taken a knock when he went crashing into the wall in Belgium, but defending world champion Kimi Raikkonen did enough damage in the laps preceding his controversial run-in with Lewis Hamilton, it would seem, to convince his employees of his long-term credentials and hunger for Formula One.

Gilles Simon, Engine Technical Director at Ferrari, has said that the team are struggling with the KERS challenge. KERS will make it’s debut in Formula One racing next season, and Ferrari are not the only team to appear to be struggling with the new components – earlier in the year, Red Bull had to evacuate their factory after one of the new KERS components started to smoke and set off the fire alarms, and a BMW mechanic was given an electric shock after he touched one of the cars during a test session.

Felipe Massa: “I did a great lap, but it was not enough to be on pole position. Today, we lacked a bit of speed compared to our main rivals but the race is very long and, over a distance, we know we can be very competitive and therefore we are capable of fighting for the win.

leader Lewis Hamilton expects McLaren to be more of a match for Ferrari at Spa-Francorchamps than they were last year.

Ferrari dominated the race with a 1-2 finish last year while McLaren were affected by the outbreak of the spy-scandal.

Felipe Massa is expecting support from Kimi Raikkonen should he emerge as Ferrari’s best hope for the world championship.

Massa has fast emerged as Ferrari’s leading challenger for the title with Raikkonen having a torrid few races.

McLaren-Mercedes are adamant they can take the fight to rivals Ferrari at the forthcoming ‘power circuits’ of Spa and Monza, despite the Scuderia’s ominous advantage in the speed traps at Valencia.

Reigning world champion receives Ferrari backing, but questions still hang over the Finn’s hunger for Formula One.

When the scarlet cars arrive on his patch, Luca di Montezemolo is always a notable presence. It is rare, though, for the Ferrari president to show his face at testing.

Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo has paid tribute to 1961 world champion Phil Hill who died on Thursday after battling with Parkinson’s disease.

Hill was the only American-born Formula One driver to have won the world championship. He did so in 1961, fittingly, for Ferrari, the team he debuted with and famously won the hearts of after letting team-mate Mike Hawthorne past at the 1958 Moroccan GP to take the world championship.

Felipe Massa may have romped to victory in Sunday’s European Grand Prix at Valencia, but it wasn’t all plain sailing for the Brazilian after stewards called the win into question by investigating his near coming-together with Adrian Sutil in the pit-lane.