By H. Mayor – photo: f1.com | A second retirement, this time  for good it seems, although only from F1. Felipe Massa’s goodbye marks the end of a 15 year era of World Championship editions. With him the competition will lose the last but one of its most veteran drivers and a key piece of the generation that made its debut on the asphalt at the beginning of the century. This coming weekend in Brazil he will relive last year’s’ emotional scenes and later in Abu Dhabi, if all goes to plan, his F1 portfolio will stop at 269 races, 41 podiums and 11 victories within 3 different teams (Sauber, Ferrari and Williams).

Next year only Kimi Raikkonen will remain from the group of young drivers that entered the F1 big game at the start of the new millennium (Massa himself in 2001). Felipe Massa became in 2002 part of an F1 universe where Michael Schumacher and his squire Rubens Barrichello were, on board their Ferraris, the absolute leaders of the competition. He also raced against other legendary names such as Juan Pablo Montoya, Ralf Schumacher, Nick Heidfield, David Coulthard and Jenson Button who also retired not long ago. The second most veteran driver in the current grid is Fernando Alonso ( 2003), after whom we have to forward all the way to 2007 in order to find any other driver still competing today: Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel.

A forced retirement

It is public knowledge that Massa’s retirement last year was compelled by the lack of a seat for the following season. Then things changed as Valtteri Bottas signed with Mercedes and William asked Felipe to come back and foster Lance Stroll’s début. Now both team and driver have confirmed the end of a 15-year era by remembering the best times that he no doubt had during his career despite his very discreet later years.

Perhaps Massa, a driver of excellent technical skills, has lacked that last spark that makes a champion. He came very close to becoming one in 2008 when he lost the title to Hamilton by a single point in what it was an exhilarating season. For the latter, this was to be the first of four victories. The years that followed the retirement of legend Michael Schumacher and with a lack of clear leadership, Massa and Raikkonen enjoyed some very real chances of winning a World Championship with Ferrari. The Finnish driver did it in 2007 and it felt as if Massa was again more comfortable taking a secondary role, first under the shadow of the German legend, and later under that of Fernando Alonso.

A lack of young talent

At the same time as the World Championship loses one of its ‘classics’, more and more voices denounce the lack of opportunities available to young talents. In 2018 virtually the same names will populate the grid with Williams being one of the few scuderias leaving with an open seat for a new young aspirant to grab  (perhaps Di Resta, Kvyat, Wehrlein…), as long as they don’t rely on a comeback from Kubica.