The specialist pre-season training camp, in sunnier climes to the traditional northern European winter, has long been a staple of many teams’ preparations ahead of a new season, giving them the chance to put their drivers through some rigorous exercises as well as providing an opportunity for team building.

Ferrari have chosen the Canary island for their training camp in recent days, with race drivers Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa being joined in the activities by Academy drivers Jules Bianchi – who last week was confirmed as Force India’s reserve driver for 2012 – and Italian GP2 runner Davide Rigon.

The Maranello outfit say activities have included mountain biking, football, tennis and canoeing, along with more general work outs in the gym and on the beach.

But having enjoyed temperatures of 20+ degrees in Lanzarote, Alonso and Massa are set for something of a culture shock on their return to Italy ahead of Friday’s launch at Fiorano with the Maranello area currently suffering from freezing conditions with a high likelihood of snow for the forthcoming days.

Ferrari admit the forecast for poor weather could scupper plans to run the 2012 car for the first time at their test track for filming purposes before their transporters set off for the first test at Jerez in southern Spain.

The inaugural run could therefore be delayed until the opening day of testing next Tuesday, when Ferrari have confirmed Massa will get the honour of driving the car first in an official session.

Two lacklustre campaigns have left the Brazilian vulnerable and both Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo and team boss Stefano Domenicali have spelled out that he is fighting to save his job.

Interestingly, the Ferrari website presents a stark picture in its story on Massa’s appearance in Madonna and puts Massa’s position in these terms,
“Felipe Massa’s future depends on what happens now. At the end of 2012, the contract between the Brazilian and Scuderia Ferrari will come to an end, but the pressure that might build with this expiry date does not seem to have unsettled Felipe.”

Massa himself is realistic enough to know that he faces a decisive year. He’s less able to drive around problems in the car than team mate Fernando Alonso and suffered more from the Ferrari’s handling problems on the harder Pirelli tyres last year.

“If we have a good car then I know I can fight for the title, as I have already done in the past,” he said. “Since 2008, nothing has changed: after my accident, I am still the same.”

“I am well aware that in some ways, the first part of the season will be more important than the second,” he added. “When we reach the mid-point of the season, we will talk about my future and see what are the chances of continuing to work with Ferrari: The most important thing is the results: if they are good, making decisions about the future will be much easier and there would be no point in changing a situation that everyone was happy with.”

Photo: Ferrari

The absence of a strong alternative candidate plays a part in keeping him there and it will be very interesting to monitor his progress this year and Ferrari’s positioning around alternatives. With the team having given indications that they’d like to get Sebastian Vettel as a long term leader post-Alonso, once Vettel’s contract expires with Red Bull in 2014, the team may be looking for the right person to bridge that gap.

However Alonso indicated today that he plans to keep racing for many years to come,
“I’ve still got many years to come,” he said today. “I’m 30 years old and there are guys racing at 42 or 43, so I guess every year I will improve a little bit.

“Maybe as you get older you lose some speed, but you gain experience so it compensates.”

Massa says that the new Ferrari car is a completely different design concept and finds reason for optimism in both the move to softer Pirelli tyres and the arrival of ultra experienced tyre engineer Hirohide Hamashima from Bridgestone.

Ferrari are certainly giving Massa every chance to come good, but his team mate Fernando Alonso is now in his prime, as he showed last year with some amazing results in an underperforming Ferrari car.

Massa has been in F1 for ten years, six of them with Ferrari. Will there be a seventh?

The Brazilian was finishing off his press briefing at the front of the Ferrari hospitality area when Hamilton approached him and gave him a hug and said a few words.

It is not clear whether Hamilton felt moved to make some kind of apology or just a gesture to say that he wanted to put the events behind them. But either way, Massa, who earlier in the race had had another battle with the McLaren driver, this time without incident, accepted the gesture and said he appreciated Hamilton doing it.

“It was good to have a nice chat with Felipe after the race, ” said Hamilton. “I have great respect for him and I’m already looking forward to racing him again next year.”

For his part, Massa, who had always maintained that Hamilton was at fault in all six of their collisions, said, “I want to say I was pleased Lewis came round to see me while I was talking to the journalists. It was a very nice gesture on his part.”

Ferrari team boss Stefano Domenicali said, “I was very pleased to see today Lewis Hamilton come in here and hugging Felipe. At the end of the day that is what it is all about. It was a good gesture and I am very happy that today this was pretty clear.”

Montezemolo used an interview on a show in Italy called Politica nel Pallone to confirm that the Brazilian, who almost won the world title three years ago, is safe for next year despite an “unfortunate season” but that he must prove himself to stay with the team beyond next year.

“With Massa we have a contract for next year. He’s had an unfortunate season but we aren’t doubting a driver who three years ago fought for the world title. Let’s hope he closes out this season with some satisfaction in Brazil. Then next year he will fight for his reconfirmation in 2013.”

Massa has won in Brazil twice, including the emotional day in 2008 when he thought he had won the title, only for Lewis Hamilton to pick up the fifth place he needed on the last corner of the last lap to steal it from him. On such tales of triumph and despair are great sportsmen built. But since then it’s been a tale of decline for the Brazilian, who was going along quite well in 2009 until his accident in Hungary. And since then, particularly with the arrival of Fernando Alonso alongside him in 2010, Massa has looked like a shadow of his former self.

Last year Massa scored 57% of the points Alonso scored. This year the ratio is just 44%.

He has been very lucky that the Ferrari has enough of a performance margin ahead of Mercedes and the others that he can be as much as six or seven tenths slower per lap than Alonso and still not lose positions. Were he driving in the midfield, where the margins are tight, with that kind of gap to his team mate he’d be really under the spotlight.

Montezemolo gave the Ferrari team a five out of ten for the season, clearly showing his displeasure at the way the team has been unable to compete for the win at most venues, even if Alonso has had some mighty results against the odds.

“A mark out of ten for our season? I’d give a 5 which I’ll raise to 6 considering the effort and the victory at Silverstone exactly 60 years after Ferrari’s first win in F.1,” he said. “But the season started badly, we didn’t interpret the regulations well and we didn’t take risks in the technology of our project.”

Alonso currently has 245 points, only seven less than he ended last season with and has a chance to finish second. He is therefore likely to end the season on a higher total than 2010. But the chasm that exists between his score and Sebastian Vettel’s is the reality that he and Ferrari face going into next season.

He also reiterated his views about Ferrari wanting Formula 1 rebalanced away from aerodynamics if it is to commit to stay in long term,

“There is a disproportionate influence of aerodynamics, both in sport, as it counts for 90% of the performance, and as regards cost,” he said. “Ours is the only professional sport where tests and training are not carried out. You can’t just move from an high number of tests to zero tests, there is also a happy medium. And why then spend absurd sums of money on aerodynamics and not on tests? What opportunities can we give young drivers to break into the sport and how can they gain experience?”

It was the sixth occasion the pair have collided in a bitter season.

Speaking after the race Massa said, “I don’t have anything against him. Zero. If I saw him I would tell him what I’m telling you now.

“I don’t understand why I have the penalty. I braked later than him, I was in front and on the grippier part of the circuit and I didn’t see him on the left. So he was behind and he touched my rear wheel. If it was Lewis or not I would do the same.

Asked how he did not know Hamilton was there when he turned in, given that he appeared to look several times in his mirrors as the McLaren closed up he said, “I knew he was on my side, but when I brake this is the important place and he was not on my side. I braked later than him. So am I supposed to back off and let him through? He was on the dirty side, I turned, he touched me at the back. If we were wheel to wheel I would not have turned.”

Asked if it had become a feud with the Englishman, Massa said, “Maybe for him. All the incidents are him touching my car. So I didn’t do anything wrong.

Hamilton said that he had stood next to the Brazilian on the grid at the minute’s silence and put his arm around him. Massa said he simply put his hand on his shoulder and said “Have a good race”.

Said Massa, “This is trying to do what? ‘Have a good race is not part of talking.’ ”

The pair have not spoken since Singapore where Massa challenged Hamilton in the pits and again in front of TV cameras.

The feud is real and neither driver seems to want to back down. F1 is in need of some eye catching story lines at the moment with the title settled and Sebastian Vettel continuing to win at will.

This spat will carry over, but it’s not enough to encourage many journalists to go to Abu Dhabi in two weeks. There was a decent media presence here in India, boosted by many Indian media. But with no storyline and no championship, the media turn out in Abu Dhabi is expected to be very small.

Meanwhile Hamilton fell further behind team mate Button in the drivers’ championship. He now trails Button by 38 points with a maximum 50 left to gain. Given the form of Sebastian Vettel, he will need to win at least one race to overhaul his team mate with Button not scoring in either race.

Hamilton has never been beaten in a championship season by a team mate before.

Then there came the suggestion that the F1 drivers want to meet with FIA Race Director Charlie Whiting in Suzuka this weekend to discuss Hamilton’s overly aggressive driving. Then at the weekend F1.com ran a race edit featuring a radio clip of Massa’s race engineer Rob Smedley urging his driver to,”Hold Hamilton as much as we can. Destroy his race as much as we can, c’mon boy!” The Daily Mail has worked that up into a story and many others have piled in behind them.

It was Smedley who delivered the infamous words to Massa last season in Germany, “Fernando is faster than you, do you understand?” – possibly the most demotivating words Massa has ever heard via radio during a race, as they were a code for him to move over.

What is most interesting about Smedley’s choice of words in the latest incident is that he feels that the best way to motivate Massa is to get him to see that “destroying” Hamilton’s race is a positive thing to do. It’s a very aggressive attitude, but it speaks to that part of Massa’s psyche which has not forgiven nor forgotten the loss of the 2008 world championship to Hamilton, largely due to the pit lane debacle during the safety car in Singapore, which was triggered by Nelson Piquet’s deliberate accident. Massa has called for that race result to be annulled and described that incident as a “robbery”.

Massa and Hamilton have tangled in the past and although there wasn’t anything in it championship-wise for either man in Singapore, Smedley is clearly trying hard to get an out of sorts Massa to rediscover his form by appealing to the part of Massa that really dislikes his rival.

The famous Horse Whisperer – Ferrari’s “bloggy” way of saying controversial things without them appearing as official Ferrari statements – described the Daily Mail’s story as “a polemical mountain made out of the molehill that was the phrase delivered by Rob Smedley during the Singapore Grand Prix.”

It goes on, “It’s true that Felipe Massa’s race engineer was caught up in the heat of the moment and chose to use the verb “destroy” at some point. It might not have been the most politically correct choice of word, but it definitely carried no malicious intent, especially when you take into account that Rob is a Middlesbrough lad, born and bred!

“It is also true that this exhortation to Felipe came at the exit to Turn 5 on lap 11 of the race, at the end of which both the Ferrari man and Hamilton were due to come in to the pits together. In other words, it had nothing to do with the collision between Felipe and Lewis that happened on the following lap.”

Massa himself has written today in his blog on the Ferrari website, “I don’t recall what Rob said. I don’t think there’s any value in stirring up trouble now and trying to link this with the subsequent contact with
Hamilton: they are two separate moments and they have nothing to do with each other. I’m sure that Lewis and I will find a way to clear this up and put a lid on this story, as is only correct between two drivers. What happens on the track should remain on the track.”

Ferrari clearly wants to cool things down a little and who can blame them? On the face of it Smedley’s words can be construed as unsporting and an extreme interpretation of the rules might see scope for some sanction against the team.

But this issue collides with the ongoing debate about Hamilton’s driving among his competitors. Let’s not forget Hamilton was the one penalised with a drive through in Singapore for tapping Massa’s wheel and puncturing his tyre, which actually did destroy Massa’s race.

Whiting meets the drivers at 5pm on Fridays at every race, so there will be a meeting. But whether any of the drivers will pipe up and say anything, time will tell. It’s never a good idea for drivers to be singled out by other drivers for discussion, as has been proposed with the drivers’ meeting about Hamilton in Suzuka. It sets a precedent which none of the drivers really needs and which could come back to haunt any of them.

This story redresses the balance a little by making Hamilton look like a victim and no doubt that was part of the motivation for this being blown up into something. That and the fact that the title race is pretty much over..

Reading it through, it seems very familiar; a newspaper goes to interview the underachieving team mate of its national hero and asks him how he feels about being beaten by their man. For Massa in this scenario you could insert any driver down the years who has found himself paired with an ace.

However Massa is slightly different in that he was a contender; 11 times a Grand Prix winner, he almost won the 2008 world championship, thought he had in fact for about 30 seconds after victory in the Brazilian Grand Prix, until Lewis Hamilton scrabbled past Timo Glock into the fifth place he needed to snatch the title away from him.

Massa’s dignity in defeat that day was the most impressive memory of the whole occasion. And so it is today, faced with a Spanish journalist wanting to know what has changed since that 2008 season when Massa won six races.

“Nothing, I am exactly the same,” says the 30 year old Brazilian. “It is true that I have not got the results since then, but I have the same ambition and determination.”

Of course, two significant life changing things have happened since then; he had a huge accident where a spring from another car hit him in the face, taking him out for the second half of 2009 and then he became a father for the first time. Massa says that neither of these things has slowed him down.

“These two things give you a lot of experience, but none of it affects me when I get into the car – at that point you do not remember anything. I forget about my son, my wife, my father and mother. Michael (Schumacher) won many titles as a parent. People talk about it too much – although it is true that these two years have been the most intense of my life.”

Massa says that he feels he has the “full support” of Ferrari and that the moment he feels he no longer has it, “I will quit immediately.”

The facts are that the last two races have seen an upturn in Massa’s fortunes, certainly in terms of finding his speed. He has qualified ahead of Alonso in Hungary and Spa, although on both occasions he’s gone on to finish behind the Spaniard; in Spa a puncture spoiled his race.

“I have great respect for him, he’s one of the greatest or the greatest in our sport,” said Alonso. “The numbers are there and impossible to repeat for us. It’s been a great pleasure to drive with him all these years. I will always remember all the battles with him. It was a priviledge to drive against Michael Schumacher.

“He decided to stop and then come back and now the car is not competitive enough for him to win races, but I’m sure he is still enjoying. There are some criticisms about his results now but I don’t agree with them. Michael was watching the races at home three years ago, now he’s seventh or ninth, but I’m sure he is happy every morning because he is racing in F1. It’s what he wants to do; he’s a driver.

“Twenty years are a lot. If I think of myself it would be 2021 and I don’t think I can do that! I want to congratulate him for these 20 years and tell him it’s a pleasure to race against him.”

The Spaniard wasn’t always so gushing. In 2006 when Schumacher spun during qualifying in Monaco, preventing his rival from taking pole from him, Alonso told Mark Webber at dinner that if the stewards did not punish Schumacher he would lie down on the grid in front of Schumacher’s car to symbolise that the German “rides all over the other drivers”.

In the event this was not necessary as the stewards ruled that Schumacher had spun on purpose and put him at the back of the grid.

Perhaps thinking of this and other moments he wishes hadn’t happened, Schumacher was in philosophical mood this afternoon,

“Taking the 20 years, taking everything that I’ve been doing…. certainly, going backwards, I would do certain things differently, but then in life you have to make some mistakes in order to understand it is a mistake and to sort of set your guidelines..

“All in all, I guess the vest that I’m wearing, that I’m wearing inside me, is pretty white, and I’m pretty happy about this. I don’t have many regrets and overall, I certainly feel very excited and proud of what has happened.”

Earlier he had said, “The rulebook always leaves you certain grey zones and leaves you clear guidelines at some moments. You have always to adapt to those guidelines and to those changes and that’s obviously the limits that you search for and occasionally you may overstep (those limits) and you may take the penalty for it.”

There was a strong show of support and respect for Schumacher from his fellow drivers today. Sebastian Vettel called him his “childhood hero”. Realising he was getting too gushing, he changed tack and said, “I think he’s an OK driver!”

Schumacher’s former team mate Felipe Massa spoke about when he was a boy in Brazil and Schumacher seemed to him to be a phenomenon, taking on and beating the national hero Ayrton Senna in 1994.

“He was first in the championship and I remember Michael very strong and he became very famous in Brazil because he was a young guy who was already quicker than Ayrton,” said Massa.

I asked him to clarify this point; did he really mean to say that in his opinion Schumacher was quicker than Senna?

He took the opportunity to clarify; “I meant he was already breaking Senna’s balls,” laughed the Brazilian. “Senna had more pole positions but Michael was ahead in the championship. I don’t believe Michael was quicker than Senna, no. I think Senna was the most incredible qualifier ever, but I put both on the same level (in terms of speed).”

There are so many ways to look at the story of Ferrari’s 2010 season, but let’s start with the helicopter view, the overview in other words. Ferrari hires Alonso (finally) gives him a winning car and despite a few mistakes he establishes himself as clear number one, takes the chances, wins races and then loses the title at the last round due to a bad mistake on strategy by his team.

The inescapable conclusion from this is that Alonso owed Ferrari one after his early season mistakes, but he made good. Now Ferrari very definitely owe Alonso one after the error in Abu Dhabi. And that sets the scene for 2011.

The detail is more complex and more controversial, of course; Alonso is hired as the team lets Raikkonen go. The Finn turned out to be not what the team was looking for, Alonso fitted the bill much better, he’s more in the mould of a Schumacher. After the euphoria of a debut win, there were some sticky moments early season, when he made out of character mistakes, like jumping the start in China or crashing in Monaco, but overall he got himself into a position to win the title, which is what you get when you hire Alonso.

Meanwhile the team showed great compassion towards its other driver Felipe Massa, keeping a seat open for him despite his head injury and backing him with a new contract, when he was struggling in the early summer. But the defining moment of his season – and to many fans of Ferrari’s – was the team orders episode in Germany.

Massa was moved aside by a message from his engineer Rob Smedley, who didn’t try too hard to disguise it. The TV director ran the audio clip and the world knew what it meant. The stewards said Ferrari had broken the rules and fined them, many fans and media felt the same way and called for stronger punishment. In the end the FIA couldn’t or wouldn’t do any more with the case on the basis of the evidence, but it did force the removal of the team orders rule, so now the big switcheroo can be done at will and I’m sure we will see team orders being used in 2011.

A fair minded person might say that the FIA’s lenience over Hockenheim leveled the scores a bit with the two episodes in Valencia and Silverstone where Alonso came out very much on the wrong side of the FIA and its stewards over episodes involving the safety car and lost a hatfull of points. In Valencia he lost out through no fault of his own, in Silverstone he tried to be clever passing Kubica and then got unlucky as Kubica retired so he couldn’t give the place back as the FIA asked him to.

Of course that episode in Hockenheim didn’t happen in isolation, many roads led to it. Alonso was angry in Australia to be left following Massa when he felt he had a chance to challenge Button for the win. In China he was behind Massa again and took matters into his own hands, passing the Brazilian in the pit lane. The team’s reaction to that told you everything about its attitude to the drivers’s roles; good on Alonso, driving like a champion. Massa’s mistake in Hockenheim was not staying far enough out of reach.

On the technical side Ferrari did a great job on the whole. The car was quick in testing, almost as quick as the Red Bull in the early races, but then tailed off as they lost ground trying to incorporate an F Duct. Monaco was a chance, but Alonso blew it. Turkey was the low point; an uncompetitive mess. A crude blown diffuser gave an uplift in performance from Valencia onwards, moving Ferrari ahead of the McLaren on pace and then a second more sophisticated one put them right in Red Bull’s wheeltracks, where they stayed to the end. This was enough to give Alonso a chance to fight back and he did so with three wins in four races from Monza to Korea.

As a result of Abu Dhabi Ferrari have changed the whole way they plan and execute race strategy with new people and new processes. It should make them more sure footed in key moments, certainly the background to every decision will be much more profound. The change sees two Englishmen called in to bring calm to the hot seats – an echo of the Brawn era?

Change where necessary, yes, but the fundamentals of this team remain the same; give Alonso a fast enough car and Ferrari will be in the title fight come Brazil in November. Where Massa fits in is anyone’s guess.

Alonso photo: Darren Heath; Drawing: Paolo Filisetti

For a full look back on the 2010 season, with race reports, detailed stories from behind the scenes and personal anecdotes, grab a copy of the JA on F1 2010 Season Review. It’s a limited print run and most are now sold, but if you haven’t bought one yet now’s your chance. It costs just £9-99 plus postageBUY BOOK

He has been the subject of speculation about whether he will retain his drive next year, while recently he has received encouraging words from Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo, which is a mixed blessing, like a chairman’s “vote of confidence” in a football manager.

The Ferrari website has identified his “key role” in the next three races and he himself has said that “the best thing I can do to help Ferrari’s and Fernando’s aspirations.”

Ferrari are 92 points behind Red Bull with 129 points available. So if Red Bull score an average of 13 points in each of the final races Ferrari cannot win the title. This is highly likely given that Red Bull has comfortably averaged 26 points a race this season.

So Massa is driving now for Alonso’s championship. It’s not a racing driver’s normal objective and it must be hard to find the motivation to put it all on the line for a team mate who’s made your life difficult all year.

If he can take points away from Alonso’s rivals, particularly the Red Bulls, then it gives Alonso more of a chance of winning the title.

Korea is a bit of an unknown, but it looks like it could be good for Ferrari. If that were the case then Massa’s role would be important, a 1-2 finish would really shake things up. Brazil will favour the Red Bulls, but Massa is normally outstanding around Interlagos and can clearly play a role.

I’m in the process of pulling together the text for my end of season book and it’s fascinating to look at the arc of Massa’s season from his emotional return from injury, to his cautious words about Alonso at the Ferrari pre season event in Madonna di Campiglio, to his feelings after outqualifying Alonso in Bahrain then after being beaten by him in the race. He was then subjected to Alonso’ aggressive pass in the pit lane in China and then we had the infamous team order to hand the win in Germany to the Spaniard.

Massa is a confidence driver, as good an example of one as you will find in Grand Prix racing. When his confidence is up, as it was in 2008, he’s amazing and can perform incredible feats. His race engineer, Rob Smedley, must take a lot of credit for that as he is not only a superb engineer, but he’s also like a motivational coach in his driver’s ear. He’s lifted Massa’s spirit to many of his great achievements.

All drivers are affected by confidence to a degree, but the hard ones, like Alonso and Schumacher back in his day, seem to perform whatever is going on around them, of course they make mistakes, but their performance doesn’t fluctuate due to confidence.

It’s been clear for most of Massa’s season that Alonso has simply “done his head in”, as the saying goes in F1. Obviously the final straw was Hockenheim, but he’d had his head down before then. As with Schumacher’s form this year, the blame is being laid on the tyres, in Massa’s case his struggles to deal with the harder compounds, but his real problem starts not with a “T” but with an “A”.

It will be interesting to see the response he gets in Sao Paolo as Brazilian colleagues tell me the Brazilian fans were very disappointed in him for moving over in Germany and he will be well aware of that, having spent a lot of time over there since then. They loved him for his fighting spirit in 2006 and 2008, but they were angry that he capitulated in Hockenheim.

He’s operating in a tough environment; in team mate match-ups among the leading drivers, Massa’s defecit to Alonso in qualifying is one of the largest. Most of the time Alonso has had two or three tenths on him, sometimes more. Although they start again from zero next season, it’s hard to see why 2011 will turn out any different from 2010.

Ferrari has stated clearly that Massa is to be retained next season, he signed a new two year deal in the summer, although Italian sources insist that it’s 2011 with an option on Ferrari’s side for 2012.

He’s a driver who looks like he needs a change of air to me, but there isn’t anywhere else for him to go and you don’t leave Ferrari out of choice.