Massa swaps pit lane for forecourt

Felipe Massa gave local drivers in Sepang pulling into their local petrol station the ultimate expert service on Thursday as the Brazilian turned pump attendant.

As part of a promotional event for the Malaysian division of Ferrari’s fuel partner Shell, Massa appeared at the Yazn Enterprise filling station and was there to greet Ferrari road car drivers on the forecourt as well as competition winners who got the chance to meet the 11-time grand prix winner.

"It is great to meet fans on a day like this. Shell works extremely hard with Ferrari to develop Shell V-Power for Formula One cars, so it is great to see the benefit it has for everyday road fuels,” Massa said.

Last year, as explained in a JA on F1 feature, Ferrari and Shell carried out a revealing experiment in which Fernando Alonso ran both Shell V Power road and race fuel in the 2009 Ferrari to see the difference between the two types in both lap time and performance – which showed fuel used on the road was much closer to the F1 mixture than might be expected.

Shell V-Power road fuel has 99 per cent of the same components as the Shell V-Power race fuel being used by Ferrari in the 2012 season and Shell V-Power Unleaded contains the same friction modification technology which is designed to help deliver more power from the first fill.