Massa on former teammate Alonso: "He divides the team"

Felipe Massa has opened up about his former Ferrari teammate Fernando Alonso, saying that the Spaniard divides the teams he drives for.

Christian Horner, Red Bull's teammate, had a similar statement not too long ago, as he said that Alonso is too chaotic to be driving for the Bulls. Alonso, who laughed away those comments, now endures the same criticism from another camp.

"In terms of talent, I put Michael [Schumacher] and Fernando [Alonso] on the same level," Massa said in his interview with Brazilian television station Globo.

"Alonso has this talent, this perception of a race... he is a different pilot, smart, fast, complete, as was Schumacher.

When asked to go deeper into the comparison between the two drivers, Massa was quick to explain the difference between Schumi and Alonso, which was largely on-track rather than off it.

"Actually, it was hard to live with both of them, but I had a very close relationship with Michael, I wanted to learn from a driver who had won seven world championships and he treated me very well.

"With Fernando, it was a fight-situation.

"No problem outside the car, he always treated me very well, we always had a good working relationship.

"Only Fernando has one thing, when he closes the visor, it seems he is a different person and that ends up dividing the team.

"If one looks, in many of the teams where he ran he always divided them in two.

"This is a problem he has - if he did not have it, he would have conquered more than he got because of the talent he has."

Another person criticizing Alonso's ways on the track, then. As Massa said, there's absolutely no problem when it comes to driving ability, quite the contrary in fact, but the Spaniard's sharp tongue always seem to get him and his team into trouble.