Felipe Massa says he is hoping for "much hotter weather" to aid Ferrari in the Italian Grand Prix.
Massa and his team-mate Fernando Alonso were both running close to Sebastian Vettel at the front of the Belgian Grand Prix early on, but suffered in the cool weather when switching to the medium compound tyre. It's been a recurring problem for Ferrari as it has been unable to get its tyres up to temperature as quickly as McLaren and Red Bull, and Massa said he was hoping for higher temperatures.
"This is a very important weekend for us," Massa told the official Ferrari website. "Not in the sense of it being a last chance for us this year or anything like that, but because we really want to produce a great result for ourselves, for the team and most of all for the fans. Spa was not fantastic for us and the cold weather accentuated our tyre problems, but this weekend, we have the same tyre compounds but hopefully much hotter weather."
Massa said that the two DRS zones would add another aspect to the race, especially late on, and that Mercedes could also challenge the top three teams.
"I think we will see a lot of overtaking, because of the high speed nature of the track and the fact we will have two zones where we can use the DRS. I'm not saying it will be an advantage to be lying second coming into Parabolica on the last lap to overtake the car in front, because if you have a good car, it's probably a better strategy to pass before then and pull out a gap that is bigger than one second. However, if you are fighting right down to the last lap, that could be the case, which would make for a very exciting race.
"At this point of the season, it is not difficult to predict that Scuderia Ferrari, McLaren and of course Red Bull Racing will be the main contenders. However, Mercedes have shown they have possibly the best top speed on the straight out of all of us and as that is so important at this circuit, they could also have some influence on the final result."
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