Felipe Massa hopes his first podium finish of the season will be a morale boost for his Ferrari team. The Brazilian, starting from eighth position, made a fantastic start and was able to fight near the top positions during the whole event.
Massa admitted he was missing being on the podium after a difficult first half of the season, but the Ferrari driver is hoping that today's result will help the team work harder to move closer to the front.
"To be honest, I miss to be here, to be in top three, but it was a fantastic race," said Massa. "I did a fantastic start, passed many cars.
"I was struggling a lot with the soft tires, but fortunately I could manage to stay in front of Sebastian and manage to put out the pace after a while. When we put on a second set of tires it was important to have good pace at that stage.
"I am happy, everyone in the team did a great job with the pit stops, so I think I am having a good result like this, a podium will definitely motivate the team to keep pushing hard, preparing a good car for the end of the championship and a great car for next year."
Massa admitted he benefited from having KERS to hold off Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel for a significant part of the race.
"It is all racing -- we have the KERS, which is a help to keep the positions, try to overtake, but you want to exchange the KERS for a bit of downforce, I change very quickly," he joked.