Felipe Massa’s quest to return to fitness following the head injuries he suffered in his Hungarian Grand Prix accident in July took an encouraging step forward earlier this week when he completed two days of karting.
The Ferrari driver’s karting run-out in Brazil represented the first time the 28-year-old had returned to a track since he suffered a fractured skull after being hit by a loose spring in qualifying at the Hungaroring just over two months ago.
Massa, accompanied by his personal doctor Dino Altman at the test, drove a couple of laps at Grana Viana karting track near Sao Paulo on Monday before heavy rain scuppered the session, but returned a day later to complete 60 laps.
Ferrari says the Brazilian will continue to drive the kart in the forthcoming days, before flying to Italy next week to use its static simulator at its Maranello factory.
The 28-year-old’s first track return comes just days after Ferrari team boss Stefano Domenicali refused to rule out the possibility that Massa could make an unexpectedly early return to F1 competition before the Abu Dhabi finale on November 1.
Although the Italian team previously indicate that Massa would resume his F1 career at the start of next season – when it said expects him to be “100%” ready – Domenicali said in Singapore that Ferrari didn’t want to totally write-off the idea of a late 2009 return.
“I think it is too early to say that to be honest. We need to see step-by-step,” he said.
“We don’t have to anticipate anything, because he will be back 100%, but there is no reason why we need to anticipate something if there is something that is not ready.
“I don’t want to exclude anything, but I think that we need to be cautious.”
With Japan hosting the F1’s season’s third to last round this weekend, any Massa return this year could only happen in his home Brazil round on October 18 or, more realistically, in Abu Dhabi’s inaugural event two weeks later.
As it stands, Massa’s competitive return to track action is scheduled at International Challenge of Go-Kart Champs event in Brazil in late November.
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