Massa Bemoans Troubled Race

The Sauber driver was involved in an incident at the start, where he made contact with the Williams of Nick Heidfeld.
 
Massa lost his front wing and was forced to pit before he retired on lap 27 when his engine suffered a problem.

"I tried to get down the inside of Nick at the start, but when he moved left to defend I had to go off the circuit and he just caught my front wing, which I then ran over," explained Massa. "I lost one of my turning vanes as a result, and a lot of time.

"Despite that, the car was really, really good after I pitted for a new nose and wing. We changed our strategy to a one stop refuelling and even with a lot of fuel aboard I could do very competitive lap times.

"It might even have been possible to do something good despite the crash but then I started to lose power, and my race was over."

Sauber endured a disappointing day after Jacques Villeneuve finished down in 11th place after struggling to move ahead of slower cars in the opening part of the race.

"At the first corner everybody was going four abreast so I backed off a little," said Villeneuve. "I could see somebody was going to get into trouble. Unfortunately that put me behind the Jordans and the Minardis.

"Their tyres warmed up quicker than mine did and the problem was that they were getting down the straights faster so it was really difficult initially to get past them.

"Once I did the pace was reasonable and I had no problem keeping ahead of Ralf, but in any case I think it would have been very difficult to score points today."