Felipe Massa: Record-breaking Baku a weekend to remember

I think everyone in Formula 1 arrived in Baku with a great deal of curiosity, for it is always hard to know what to expect with a new track – especially when it is a street circuit.

I must say that my first impression of the layout of Baku was not the best, though, because in Friday practice I had problems during braking: something that is not ideal on a tight street course. Added to that, the traction was not great, and I struggled to get heat in the tyres.

Between Friday and Saturday everyone at Williams Martini Racing worked really hard, and although not all the setup changes delivered the results we had hoped for, the driveability of the car was much improved ahead of qualifying.

I was pleased therefore to end up fifth on the grid and, without a little mistake at the last corner before the long start/finish straight, I reckon I could have gone a couple of tenths faster.

Tyre strategy

The promise from qualifying helped me believe in the possibility of being able to deliver a good result in the race – and for the first few laps after the start, my feeling about this was even stronger. The tyres were working well, and my pace was good as I was close to Daniel Ricciardo and Kimi Raikkonen.

But then gradually I began to suffer a bit of graining with the rear tyres and my lap times started to suffer. It was the same problem that Ricciardo suffered from, and Red Bull had to fix that by switching to the medium tyre.

We stuck with the soft, and at that moment I thought it was the right choice to make. But unfortunately it was not the correct thing to do and our pace fell away. I think it is fair to say that if we ran the race again, the medium compound was the tyre we would have gone for.

No chaos

In the end, I took one championship point for 10th place, and it was pretty incredible that the race only had a few retirements – and that they were due to mechanical reasons.

Before the start of the race, I thought I needed to take a ‘conservative’ approach because I was convinced, after seeing the two races from GP2, that not many cars would be finishing the race.  I believed that just by getting to the chequered flag there would be a decent haul of points in the offing.

But it seems that what I thought, my rivals thought the same thing. So we saw a race with few surprises, a race with no mistakes and a straight run for 18 drivers to get to the finish line.

Over the weekend there was a lot of talk about the new Baku street circuit, and especially the maximum speed that was being reached at the end of main straight.

Personally I don’t think that the overall speed is a problem. In Mexico last year we reached very high top speeds, but that was on a track where the asphalt was smooth so there were no problems. But in contrast to that, Baku has many bumps and then it becomes a little bit more dangerous.

Pitstop record

Changing topics, I have spoken several times in my column about the incredible work that the ‘boys’ have been doing with the pitstops this year.

In Baku, they outdid themselves with a time according to our own calculations that was 1.89 seconds. The official timekeeper had it down at 1.92 seconds – which is still a great achievement, as it matches the official outright record.

Last year, we were not one of the quickest teams to change tyres, due to a problem in the phase of the stop involving unscrewing the wheelnut that had overheated out on track.

Over the winter months, the team invested heavily in both equipment and in preparation of the staff who conduct the pitstops. The result has been some really exceptional performances – but we think there is time to be found. The team is still working to improve!

Now we move on to Austria, and it will be interesting to see what happens there. It is the track where I got my last pole position two years ago, and I always go there with high expectations.

We know our closest rivals Red Bull and Ferrari have got stronger this season, but the Red Bull Ring remains a good track for us.

This year also there will be a new asphalt, which could make things interesting. I noticed that when the DTM was there, the average improvement of lap time from the previous season was around two seconds. So expect some quick times!