Felipe Massa, Venturi, Formula E, Marrakech, 2019

Adapting from F1 to Formula E “not easy” – Massa

RaceFans Round-up

Posted on

| Written by

In the round-up: Felipe Massa admits he’s found it tricky adapting to Formula E.

What they say

The former Formula 1 driver finished 17th on his debut and 18th last weekend in Morocco:

It’s not easy. There’s so many things you need to change, especially when you’re [used to] driving in Formula 1. I did some testing, I think step-by-step I’m understanding how is the procedure in Formula E.

There’s so many different areas, especially races you need to have one mind but the qualifying another one just going with more power for one lap. So again you have so many things that is different. The track, city tracks, very narrow, low grip. There’s a lot to learn but hopefully I can do things in the right way.

Quotes: Dieter Rencken

Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and go ad-free

Daniil Kvyat, Alexander Albon, Toro Rosso, Yas Marina
Are you rooting for Toro Rosso’s new line-up?

Show which drivers and teams you are supporting

Which F1 drivers and teams are you supporting this season? Here's how you can show your support for your favourite on the grid on RaceFans:

  • Log in with your RaceFans account (sign up here if you don't have one)
  • Select Edit My Profile from the top-right menu
  • Select F1 Teams and Drivers
  • Make your selections then click Save Changes

Social media

Notable posts from Twitter, Instagram and more:

Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and go ad-free

Comment of the day

@Robbie sees mounting evidence that Lance Stroll has been judged too hastily.

Another Williams article that makes it clear we need to judge Stroll only once he is in a better car. And that we shouldn’t expect too much from Kubica this year.
@Robbie

Happy birthday!

Happy birthday to Ed!

If you want a birthday shout-out tell us when yours is via the contact form or adding to the list here.

Author information

Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

Got a potential story, tip or enquiry? Find out more about RaceFans and contact us here.

46 comments on “Adapting from F1 to Formula E “not easy” – Massa”

  1. I like Ticktum. I can tell right now when he gets to F1 he’s going to be one of my favorite drivers.

    1. Did your other favorite drivers also overtake the safety car queue to ram a rival?

    2. Yep – he’d be perfect to drop straight in to RBR to partner with Max. Got exactly the same attitude so it would be hard to tell them apart.

    3. I think he’s an arrogant, trumped up, little oik! His attitude is awful, thought he would walk the series, get his super license points and be off. Reporter doing her best to get a decent interview from him and he is pretty rude and uncooperative. No amount of PR training is going to get me to like him.

      1. not a nice guy, probably gonna be a great winner.

  2. Shower thought – could Alonso coax Toyota to rejoin Formula 1? At least as an engine supplier, perhaps with McLaren, given how much Brown dotes on him still.

  3. Very disrespectful from Rowland to call Massa an idiot.

    1. @prelvu I think you mean Piquet Jr.

  4. Ticktum is a grade A bellend

  5. Tictum is a typical RBR academy driver, not sure why or how RBR attracts this kind of crass.

    1. not sure why or how RBR attracts this kind of crass

      Marko and Horner.

      1. @johnrkh we can comment of the drivers they select and everything, but the fact is RBR academy programme is by far the most sucessful one. Not just for launching the carreers of Verstappen, Ricciardo and Vettel, but also giving real chances to their drivers. Only them have two teams competing and total control on who gets those 4 seats. No other team can do that.

        I guess their main problem right now is that they lost every quality driver out there, and they had to recycle the Hartleys and Kvyats… but taking that aside, and also the way they use and dispose some drivers, it’s been sucessful.

        1. @fer-no65, it can be questioned whether it is necessarily a positive or a negative fact that Red Bull is able to directly control four seats in the sport, given it could be argued to create a “closed shop” environment where, if you are not part of their programme, you are permanently unable to drive for those teams.

          Indeed, there are those who might question whether the mentality of locking drivers into a specific driver training scheme is necessarily good for the sport as a whole, or whether it ends up creating a situation which ends up locking out potential drivers who lack the necessary links to get themselves onto one of those programmes in the first place.

          It also depends on how exactly you are defining “most successful” programme – it might have a lot of former drivers, but given that their programme has been running for significantly longer than those of other teams and has got through many more drivers in the process, that does perhaps skew the picture slightly.

          If you look at it in terms of the percentage of drivers who finally ended up in F1 after first signing a contract with a junior team, you could argue that there has been a higher percentage of drivers from Ferrari’s young driver programme who graduated into F1 when compared to Red Bull – if you take that as your metric, then Red Bull’s programme isn’t necessarily the most successful one.

          1. I wish you created an account so I can reply to you and also get the notifications from your replies. You are a frequent user here, consider doing it!

            Your points are good ones, and I don’t agree entirely with Red Bull’s way. I’ve criticized them too, I find it hard to believe that a driver is good enough to reach F1 but without Red Bull they are gone forever. Only Vettel and Sainz moved outside RBR’s to an active role. And I’d imagine Buemi and JEV were good enough to keep going in another team, and RBR could’ve helped them do it. I guess Sainz got away with it because Red Bull wanted Honda and that he was part of the deal with Renault… but even still, it’s tough waters.

            Mind, I still think they are the most sucessful programme. Although I have to admit they have been lucky, in a way, that Vettel and Ricciardo decided to leave. Otherwise they’d have been stuck with them and Max for a longer time, blocking the way for Gasly, Kvyat and other hopefuls.

        2. Verstappen wasn’t in the red bull programme, he was in line for a Mercedes drive but they snoozed and lost him.

        3. @fer-no65, I know for sure that Verstappen would have gotting into F1 regardless of Marko, or indeed Red Bull. The first time he ever had a RB connection was after they signed his contract to race for STR. Vettel was connected to RB early on, but if not for Red bull, he would have probably made his F1 entry as well.

          Sainz would likely have gotten at least close on his own too.

          1. They still made him a race winner by giving him a seat right away and then switching him to Red Bull early in 2016. Not sure Mercedes would’ve been able to do that had he signed up with them.

            Not sure about Sainz tho, even Red Bull weren’t sure about promoting him to Toro Rosso. If I remember well, before his title in Formula Renault 3.5, he wasn’t having a good time…

  6. Not Ticktums fault.
    He blamed it on the last name last season
    So he should change the T to D

  7. Are you rooting for Toro Rosso’s fresh pair of sacrificial lambs? Now I do.

  8. Funny how everyone has a crack at Ticktum for doing the wrong thing, but what about Senna vs Prost at Suzuka in ‘89? Michael trying to punch Coulthard at Spa in ‘98? Piquet punching Salazar at Hockenheim in the mid-80’s? Vettel hitting Lewis at Baku last year?

    Yes he made a monumental mistake a couple of years ago but he’s not the only driver to have done so. If he’s good enough let the kid race. If he does something similar again I’d be surprised but penalise him then and roast him across comments and social media.

    But we always want drivers with personalities and he’s clearly got one. Back it with speed and results and we’ll all love him!

    1. Everybody had a go at them as well when those incidents happened.
      I still vividly recall that there was not one single tweet ignoring the Senna/Prost altercation in ’89.

      1. Clever 😏

      2. @coldfly 1989 , tweet ? lol :)

      3. Fudge Kobayashi (@)
        15th January 2019, 10:08

        I still vividly recall that there was not one single tweet ignoring the Senna/Prost altercation in ’89.

        @coldfly this absolutely killed me sir. �����🤣�����

    2. Did you see how he acted last weekend.
      Then didn’t go on the podium coz his teammate beat him.
      Hope he never gets the 40 fia points for superlicence

    3. Clay, as others have noted, there was in fact quite a considerable backlash in a number of those incidents at the time, but the passage of time has smoothed over a number of those complaints.

      In the case of Senna ramming Prost – which was in 1990, not 1989 – the general consensus was pretty critical of Senna, with quite a few arguing that Senna should have been disqualified from the championship and banned from the sport for what he did: even now, many will argue that race is a permanent and shameful stain on Senna’s career.

      In the case of the Schumacher-Coulthard incident in 1998, it is worth noting that the FIA did consider intervening and taking disciplinary action. In the end, they didn’t take further action after Schumacher apologised and Coulthard did accept, if not necessarily the full blame at the time, that he had exhibited poor judgement in the way that he’d driven.

      With regards to Piquet and Salazar, Piquet wasn’t exactly that popular within the paddock at the best of times, as he could be a fairly unpleasant character – so, in some ways, Piquet’s behaviour was kind of seen as basically a continuation of how he normally behaved.

      1. I don’t see the 1990 Japan race as a stain on Senna’s career. If anything it is a clear showing of how he approached racing, ruthless and psychological. He always was willing to go to the limit. Shumi seemed to have taken that school to heart and you can see Max following it as well. Of course you can debate sportmanship etc. but i don’t think they care if in the end they get the title.
        Anyways 1990 can never be decoupled from the 1989 french political farce that lead to Senna’s disqualification…without it it would have never happened…

        1. @maxv

          I don’t see the 1990 Japan race as a stain on Senna’s career. If anything it is a clear showing of how he approached racing, ruthless and psychological. He always was willing to go to the limit

          Surely deliberately crashing into another car is way over the ‘limit’!

          And we criticize Piquet Jr for deliberately hitting a wall!

          1. Let’s also include the bizarre and unique circumstance of Senna getting pole and then Balestre changing the spot for the pole sitter to start from…namely the dirty side of the track, on Saturday night, between the quali session and the race, thus putting in Senna’s mind that Balestre was against him and for fellow Frenchman Prost to win the WDC.

          2. @asanator

            Well it proved to be within the limits. Didn’t get a penalty, won the championship.

            Was it the right thing to do, well Prost was doing everything in his power from the otherside. It was dirty all over.

            Doesn’t justify it, and luckily nobody got hurt. Does make for a rivalry to remember, 30 years later we are still talking about it :-)

  9. Just to say that Autosprint’s article cites Corriere dello Sport as the source, which a few days ago made that speculation about Domenicali’s return to Maranello. I’m not writing it off completely but the whole thing sounds nothing more than a personal hypothesis from the journalist.

  10. It certainly must be hard listening to guy like Piquet Jr calling you an “amateur”

  11. And honda keeps doing test beds and engine penalties. Someone needs to tell them penalty points from engine changes do not count in either constructors’ or drivers’ championship.

  12. People tend to trash on Max’s personality, but Ticktum is at least 2 levels above him, being a spoilt brat primadonna hybrid.
    He has this attitude of being entitled to wins. Sad that since his tantrum about Schumacher, he has somebody to control his social media activities.
    The resulting meltdown back then, where he and his gf called commenters nobodies and such was pretty entertaining

    1. We need those guy’s to make F1 a little interesting.

    2. Should be in F1 based on that interview alone

  13. Hopefully, he’d put all the caps fitted with the Dekra-logo on sale or something now that he won’t be using them anymore as I’ve always sort of admired them and wanted one, LOL.

    I agree with the COTD.

    Regarding the Autosport-article: That could be worth it if it were to help RBR out in the long-term.

    Re Motorsport Week: Yes, and yes, his grasp of English mightn’t be the greatest, but it’s still understandable nevertheless. I don’t care too much about the level of fluency as long as it doesn’t affect my understanding.

  14. Can’t wait for Dan Ticktum to NOT make it to f1 and his subsequent tweets for the following 15yrs about how would be 15x world champion if he was in f1. And probably still saying something about the Schumacher name..

    1. This! What an utter cockwomble. I hope he ends up out of motorsport – he’s not contributing anything postivie to it.

  15. @keithcollantine Has anyone got any idea exactly why Ticktum is able to earn points in this series?

    Supplement 1 of Appendix L of the International Sporting Code clearly states:

    In order to be eligible for the below table, the championships concerned will also need to meet the following criteria:
    – Be composed of a minimum of 5 race weekends.
    – Be held on a minimum of 3 different tracks

    The F3 Asia Winter series is only 3 weekends & on 2 tracks. Yet it is in the table of eligible series for points earning the same as a full season of British F3…

  16. Just been looking at the “good compromise” that Coulthard mentions.
    Sky have insisted that the highlights now cannot start until 3 hours after the race end (used to be 2 hours) – that means Canada, US and Mexico races air after midnight.
    Sky have insisted that the highlights package is reduced by 7 minutes – programme reduced in length from 75 to 60 minutes.
    Not quite sure where there has been any compromise. Looks like Sky have said ‘this is what you can have, want it?’ and C4 have doffed their caps and said yes.
    C4 are almost certain to lose Webber and Chandok to Sky, who are revamping their line up in their pursuit to find someone even more dull than Damon Hill.

    1. @mrfill – If the FTA highlights is anything like we get in Oz then don’t bother. Honestly it is just random bits of the race interspersed with too many ads and the action is extremely difficult to follow.

  17. Dan Ticktum got own’d by Rinus van Kalmthout aka Veekay’… our nex fast Dutch Guy. #thisguy
    Racing in the US, Pro Mazda series and winter preping for the IndyLights in Asia F3.

    #Rememberthename

Comments are closed.