Ferrari's Felipe Massa returned to the Formula One paddock on Friday for the first time since he suffered life-threatening head injuries in July and said he was raring to race again. "I'm very good. It would have been better to be driving the car, but anyway I'm quite happy that things are going quite well," he told a news conference at his home Brazilian Grand Prix, where he will wave the chequered flag on Sunday.
"I can say that I am really the same as before," added the 28-year-old, who was hit on the head by bouncing debris from compatriot Rubens Barrichello's Brawn in Hungarian Grand Prix qualifying. "In the last three weeks, after the second operation, I started to do fitness and now I am really the same as I was before the accident in terms of the physical side," he said.
"I did 100 kilometres at Fiorano in the 2007 car and it was very good. To be honest, I was pushing. I was not really slow, the consistency was good and everything was really normal," said the Ferrari driver. "Now I can do everything like I was doing before. The only big issue is that everything needs to be 100 percent ready because our sport is a risky sport."
Massa, the race winner in Brazil last year, said it was not easy being a spectator. "I want to be in the car, driving. Especially here in Brazil. It would have been fantastic to come back at this race... it is not very easy to be outside, just looking and not doing anything," he said. Massa was welcomed back by McLaren's Lewis Hamilton, the British rival who beat him to the championship by a single point in the 2008 thriller at Interlagos.
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