Felipe
Massa

Felipe Massa was born in São Paulo on 25 April 1981 and grew up in Botucatu. He took up karting at the age of eight. In 1998 he moved into Brazilian Formula Chevrolet, winning that championship in 1999. In 2000 he won both the Italian and the European Formula Renault titles, and in 2001 he took the Euro Formula 3000 championship, winning six of the eight races.

He made his Formula 1 debut for Sauber at the 2002 Australian Grand Prix. He scored four points in his first season, with a fifth place in Spain his best result. Sauber signed Heinz-Harald Frentzen for 2003, so Massa spent that year as a test driver for Ferrari. He returned to Sauber for 2004 and 2005, finishing fourth in Belgium in 2004. In 2006 he moved to Ferrari to partner Michael Schumacher.

At Ferrari he scored his first podium at the Nürburgring in 2006. In Turkey he took his first pole position and his first win, and in Brazil he won his home race, becoming the first Brazilian to win at Interlagos since Ayrton Senna in 1993. He finished the championship in third place. In 2007 he won in Bahrain, Spain and Turkey and ended the year fourth. He was second at the Brazilian Grand Prix, where Kimi Räikkönen clinched the title. In 2008 he won six races, including his home Grand Prix again. Lewis Hamilton became champion on the final lap of the last race and beat Massa to the title by a single point.

At the 2009 Hungarian Grand Prix Massa had a serious accident in qualifying. Luca Badoer and Giancarlo Fisichella drove his car for the rest of the season. He returned in 2010 alongside Fernando Alonso and briefly led the championship after the Malaysian Grand Prix. He left Ferrari after the 2013 season. At Williams he took the final pole position of his career in Austria in 2014, and he stood on the podium several times in 2014 and 2015. His last podium came at Monza in 2015. He postponed the retirement announced for the end of 2016, raced for Williams again in 2017 and then ended his Formula 1 career with 269 starts, 11 wins, 16 pole positions and 41 podiums.

From 2018 to 2020 Massa raced in Formula E for Venturi. In the Brazilian Stock Car Pro Series he won a race at Cascavel in 2023. From 2017 to 2022 he was also president of the Commission Internationale de Karting.

Source: Wikipedia, “Felipe Massa”. Text licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.