Massa delighted with improved form

The Ferrari driver was a factor all weekend having matched his double world champion team-mate Fernando Alonso for pace in qualifying and then managing his strategy more successfully than the Spaniard during the race.

"I'm very, very happy with my performance," Massa told the BBC. "It was the best race for me this year - one of the best compared to last year as well.

"It's a shame because we could have finished in the top, and it was not possible. We finished the race. I did my best but, it was not enough to make everybody happy, not just me."

Massa admitted that despite his strong showing he was frustrated by the result, adding that he believed that a three-stop strategy might have been a better option than the two-stop he used.

"At the end of the day they chose the right strategy [the cars ahead of him]," he said. "Not just Lewis [Hamilton] - four cars together. All these cars passed me very easily. Even the guy who dominated the race, which was Sebastian [Vettel], didn't win because of his strategy, which was the same as mine.

"It shows that we didn't pick the right one. My pace on the soft was great, even similar to Sebastian, and we took that as a consideration that maybe we were able to do one less stop.

"Looking at everybody stopping straight away, we took the decision already in the first stint and unfortunately it didn't work like we expected."