Felipe Massa 'was not pushing' in Hungarian GP qualifying crash

Massa had just gone out on intermediate tyres when he touched the kerb and white line at the edge of the track on his out-lap during Q1.

"I just touched the line and then I lost the rear," he said. "I was not pushing, I was going on the out-lap.

"Stopping so early in qualifying is really a shame and I'm very sorry for what happened."

Williams technical director Pat Symonds said the incident was "just one of those things" but the the damage was significant.

"There is a lot of damage," he said. "Suspension and steering has gone and the front wing and nose.

"But I don't think we'll find damage on the monocoque.

"He just touched the kerb, it's just one of those things.

"He wasn't pushing and it probably would have been better if he was pushing a bit harder as he might have been more ready for it."

Massa's team-mate Valtteri Bottas made it into Q3 and will start 10th but Symonds was expecting better performance.

"[It went] very badly," he said. "Losing one car into the barrier is bad enough, the other car totally underperformed.

"If you look at times people did in third practice and compare with Q3, on average, people were going 0.4s [faster] and we went 0.4s slower so the delta was massive.

"We did lose some time with the yellow flag. We lost a lot of time in Turn 4, too, but we don't fully understand why.

"If we had completed that lap, we would have been in the right place, behind [Sebastian] Vettel by about the right amount.

"All weekend that's where we have been positioning ourselves so it's very disappointing to have one car out so early and the other just qualifying in the top 10."

However, Symonds remains hopeful for Sunday as the long run pace in practice looks strong.

"I was really pleased with it on Friday and on both tyres I thought it [long run pace] looked good," he said.

"On long run pace, barring this bizarre qualifying, I thought we were right back in our Canada position as opposed to Azerbaijan, Austria and Silverstone where we had three bad races in a row.

"This isn't one of our favourite circuits, so running well on full tanks and low fuel, it should have come together well."

Williams ran a new floor on Bottas's car in practice and chose to keep it for the rest of the weekend, with the Finn saying it is a step forward.

"Everything seems to be OK," he said. "It seems to be giving general downforce, it's not a massive step but it is a step. Everything helps."