F1 Chinese GP: Stalling rear wing caused Massa practice crash

The Brazilian lost control of his car under braking for the hairpin during second free practice on Friday - which resulted in him skidding off the track and brushing the barriers as he ran down the escape area.

Although initially baffled by what happened, Massa has explained that telemetry data shows the rear wing was at fault - potentially by the air not re-attaching as he released DRS.

"I got back to the pits and they saw my rear wing stalled just under braking and I lost the downforce under braking," he said.

"Then I lost the rear completely. It was very strange.

"It was a shame because I lost the second part of the session. I couldn't do my long run.

"I hit even the front wing which was the new piece which maybe I cannot use during the weekend. It was definitely not a positive what's happened."

Williams has introduced updates for its FW37 at this weekend's Shanghai race in a bid to close the gap to Ferrari and Mercedes.

Despite Massa's problem, team-mate Valtteri Bottas was more encouraged by what he had found - although he admitted that race pace was still a concern.

"Everything worked as expected, so that is always positive," he said. "The car straight away, when we went out, it immediately felt pretty good.

"There were no adjustments to be made, and we will investigate how to improve race pace.

"I think in qualifying we can still be strong as we have a lot in the back pocket but we need to work on race pace.

"I haven't seen compared to others, but for sure it is not worse than Malaysia. It seemed like the tyres were much more consistent than two weeks ago.

"Everything we will do with car set-up will help for the race."