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DRIVERS: FELIPE MASSA

Name: Felipe Massa
Nationality: Brazil
Date of birth: April 25, 1981 - Sao Paulo, Brazil

Felipe Massa, Australian GP 2005 

 © The Cahier Archive

From Sao Paulo, Massa arrives in Formula 2 after four seasons in motor racing, although his karting career spanned a seven year period beginning in 1990 when he was nine years old. In 1998 Massa was able to test a Brazilian Formula Chevrolet Championship for Riccardo Tedeschi, a family friend, and he did well enough to be offered a ride in the series that year. He finished fifth but stayed on the following season and won the title. He then took the decision to go to Europe and in 2000 won both the Italian and European Formula Renault Championships at his first attempt. Rather than moving to Formula 3 he took the decision to join Draco Racing in the European Formula 3000 series. He was completely dominant, winning six of eight races and in September did his first tests for the Sauber team, which was looking for a replacement for Kimi Raikkonen. He impressed the team and was signed up to be Nick Heidfeld's team mate in 2002 and did well but was replaced by Sauber at the end of the year. Massa had talks about joining Jordan but eventually settled for the job of being the second test driver at Ferrari in 2003. He returned to Sauber in 2004 and 2005 and did sufficiently well to be hired by Ferrari for 2006.

Paired with Michael Schumacher, Massa did a solid job and was rewarded with his first GP victory in Turkey and another win in Brazil. This took him to third in the World Championship.