By FIA
September 24 2005

Felipe Massa met with the media in the FIA's Thursday press conference to talk about competing in his home race this weekend and his move to Ferrari next season.

Q: Felipe, first of all, getting towards the end of the season must be a bit difficult for you because you are probably looking forward to next season (at Ferrari) and there is not all that much happening within your current team at the end of this season.

Felipe MASSA: That is not true because the last race was quite interesting, I was able to fight for a good position, until the time I changed the tyres I was fighting for fourth position, but I am really happy this year because I want to do the best I can for Sauber, who are the team who gave me the opportunity, and then when we finish the championship I am looking forward to next year.

Q: So what are your feelings about this race?

FM: Pretty confident. For sure, we have had the same car for four races so we didn’t improve the car a lot but I like the track and the atmosphere as well so I hope we can do a good job to qualify in the top ten and finish in the points, so I am pretty confident.

Q: Are you in any way preparing for next year at this stage?

FM: Yeah.

Q: Already? What sort of things are you doing?

FM: I mean, it is difficult to prepare already now because we don’t know how it is going to be next year, many things will change, especially the engine, but I am pretty optimistic and I hope to have a good car to be competitive straight away.

Q: So it is more mental preparation?

FM: Yes, that is the only thing I can do, mental preparation.

QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR:

Q: (Adrian Rodriguez Huber – Agencia Efe) For all three Brazilians: I think this could be the first time that the World Championship could be decided in Brazil; what are your feelings about that and what is your opinion about Fernando Alonso maybe winning here?

FM: I think, first of all, that he deserves it because he has driven a fantastic championship. At the beginning of the year, he was quite aggressive and winning races and in the second part he was quite intelligent as well and just finished races and scored as many points as he could. I think he deserved the championship. For Brazil, it’s fantastic to have this fight here in Brazil. I think if he wins the championship here it will definitely be very good for the country, because the country will be talked about everywhere. I think this would be quite good. I think he deserves it because he did a great championship; Kimi also, but he had some problems and he could run quite good the whole year without any technical problems, not like Kimi. Kimi was quite strong but he had a lot of problems.