With the Raikkonen-Massa pairing at Ferrari, the thing that most surprised me was how Massa bounced back to become the better performer in 2008 and 2009 after Raikkonen's 2007 title victory. In the early part of the 2007, specifically from Bahrain to Indianapolis (races 3-7), Massa had unexpectedly gained the upper hand but he had the advantage of being the incumbent and he was also more familiar with the Bridgestone tyres than Raikkonen, who had run on Michelins throughout his five seasons at McLaren. Most significantly, Massa had driven the Bridgestone-shod Sauber in the 2004 season which I believe were very similar to the 2007 Bridgestone 'control' tyres. I think both Raikkonen and Alonso, who struggled at times with their tyres in the early stages of the year, were having to adapt to the Bridgestones (as an aside, I suspect this would have given Michael Schumacher an excellent chance of winning the title if he had stayed). From the French GP onwards was a different story as Raikkonen was overall the more impressive performer, outscoring Massa 78-55 on points and winning five races to his team mate's one. Massa was closer than many expected, but Raikkonen had ultimately delivered the goods with the most victories of any driver that season and the WDC against a strong challenge from both McLaren drivers.
After the first four rounds of 2008, it seemed as though this pattern was continuing, with two wins from the first four races for Raikkonen. Massa did win in Bahrain, but that was after two pointless races, including Malaysia where he retired through an unenforced error under little pressure. With the Ferrari looking like the best car at this stage, I predicted the Finn would retain the title. Massa then did better in the next two races, including his third consecutive Turkish GP win, but Raikkonen seemed to move back ahead on pace in the following three races - as has been mentioned, he was on course to win in Magny Cours, while both Canada and Silverstone were missed opportunities for different reasons (the latter race was famously a nightmare for Massa, finishing last after five spins). The two drivers were level on points at this stage, with Raikkonen probably unlucky not to have a small lead on balance.
However, the pendulum clearly swung in the Brazilian driver's favour in the next three races, all of which featured Raikkonen qualifying further back and having to fight with slower cars while Massa was consistently at the front. What's more, Raikkonen was fortunate to gain six points on Massa in Hungary, where he finished third but benefitted from Massa's engine failure with just three laps to go, which deprived him of a certain and richly deserved victory (probably his best race performance apart from the Brazil title decider). In Valencia, Massa won and Raikkonen suffered an engine failure virtually identical to that suffered by his team mate in the previous race, the difference being that this probably only cost him sixth place. After this came Belgium, where Raikkonen was faster but his crash combined with Hamilton's penalty gifted victory to Massa, who had never looked like winning on track. After that point, with Massa holding a 17 point lead over Raikkonen (two points behind Lewis Hamilton) Ferrari understandably focused on his title challenge. Whatever the reason, that run of four races in summer 2008 shifted the balance of power decisively towards Massa and Raikkonen unexpectedly found himself in a supporting role, a position he would become familiar with later in his career.
Edited by HighwayStar, 27 January 2022 - 21:33.
