Massa dedicates win to girlfriend.

Felipe Massa has dedicated his Bahrain Grand Prix victory to his girlfriend, Raffaela for putting up with his moods after his disappointment in Sepang last weekend.

Massa was on it throughout the weekend in Bahrain and led practically from start-to-finish after starting from pole. Furthermore despite coming under pressure from Lewis Hamilton early on and towards the end, the Brazilian kept his cool, setting the fastest lap of the race near the end, en-route to the third win of his career.

"A great result and it's nice that we now have a long break during which I can enjoy thinking about it," he noted. "After the first two races did not go so well for me, we put everything together today. The team did a great job today in terms of the strategy and the car set-up and everything else. But I will dedicate this win to my girlfriend Raffaela who has had to be very patient with me this weekend!"

Asked about the race and how the car was, he said it was pretty good throughout, although he did have a few issues at the start.

"In the first stint my car was not really well balanced and I was suffering from a lot of oversteer," he confirmed. "Lewis was quite close for the whole stint but then the second stint was fantastic for me.

"The car was behaving very, very well on scrubbed tyres and I took away a bit of front wing and it was really much easier to drive and I could build a nice gap.

"Then in the last stint I had hard tyres and I saw also that the gap was reasonable and I started to look after my car and maintain my pace and go through the traffic to the finish."

All in all he reckoned it was pretty much a perfect afternoon and now he is right back in contention for the title, fourth overall, 5 points behind the leading trio of Fernando Alonso, Kimi Raikkonen and Lewis Hamilton, who are all tied at the top.

"For sure the season is really close and looking at how the championship is, it's very exciting. Ferrari and McLaren are very close together and it's a very important for us to work really hard during the break now to try to improve our car a little bit more. It will be important not to lose any opportunity," he summed-up.