3. Felipe Massa leaves Ferrari
The fate of Sergio Perez is very much dependent on the actions of drivers further up the grid. The main driver that can be seen as an obstacle to Perez's future is Ferrari driver Felipe Massa. In a similar vein to Perez, Massa worked his way up through the Formula One circus by joining Sauber in 2002 and then joined Ferrari in 2006 as Michael Schumacher's under-study. Massa's career at Ferrari has been a mixed one to say the least; by 2008 he was outracing team-mate and defending champion
Kimi Raikkonen but lost the championship to
Lewis Hamilton by a solitary point. His 2009 season was greatly affected by a freak accident at Hungary which saw him miss the rest of the season. Since being partnered with
Fernando Alonso in 2010 and Massa's return to the sport his form and consistency has been on the wane; he has failed to win a race and is currently on a podium-less streak of thirty-five races. Ferrari have shown great loyalty to Massa by giving him the opportunity to try and rediscover his old form over the last two-and-a-half seasons but it is becoming more and more apparent that he is struggling to have any sort of consistent speed. Massa's lack of speed appears even more jarring when he his compared with his team-mate; for example Alonso currently leads the 2012 Championship with 194 points, 3 race victories and 8 podiums whilst Massa has only 51 points, no podiums and is languishing in 10th. It seems inevitable that Massa will leave Ferrari in the not too distant future, it is just a question of when. Will Ferrari give him another season in 2013 or will they let him go after 2012 due to his underwhelming performances? Personally, I think that if Alonso wins the 2012 Championship but Ferrari fail to win the Constructors Championship then it is more than likely that Massa will have to find himself a new team or retire from the sport. One of Massa's main problems seems to be his consistency; he's only had three finishes inside the top 5 this year and all of them came after it had emerged that the team had been advising him about his speed. To summarise, it seems obvious to most followers of the sport that Massa has lost some degree of confidence, whether it is due to his 2009 accident, his team-mate or his last corner loss of the 2008 Championship no longer really matter as his time is most probably over with the prancing horse. Where will he go? He will most likely retire from the sport or he may re-join Sauber or a team further down the grid. More importantly, who will replace him? Well most drivers on the grid would like to drive for Ferrari, the most likely candidate is the aforementioned
Sergio Perez but as he has just confirmed a new multi-year deal with Mclaren then a move to Ferrari for the young Mexican is not possible for the near future.
There are a few other candidates such as
Paul Di Resta and
Nico Hulkenberg from Force India
as most of the other top drivers are already contract bound to other teams. It is becoming likely that Massa will in fact stay at Ferrari until the end of the 2013 as Ferrari are increasingly running out of viable options to replace him.