Massa remains upbeat despite crash

The Brazilian skidded on oil spilt by Renault's Fernando Alonso and the Ferrari spun at the Stowe corner at over 200 km/h.

The car slammed backwards into the wall and Massa was forced to miss the last 30 minutes of the morning session and a big part of the afternoon one.

Despite the crash, championship leader Massa still managed the fastest time of the day.

"It was a big crash, but that's part of the game and I have had much worse accidents in my career," said Massa, eighth fastest in the afternoon.

"I didn't see any flags and I had approached the corner in the usual way and then I totally lost control of the car under braking. I tried to slow down, but the impact was still pretty violent.

"The most important thing is that we were able to fix the car and in the end we didn't lose that much time as it wasn't planned for me to do many laps in the morning. I want to thank all the lads for the work they did: they were fantastic and they didn't stop for a moment right up to the very end of the second session.

"We came to Silverstone with a good starting point after the tests we did here last week and I think we are going in the right direction. I am pleased with the balance of the car and its performance on both types of tyre we have here from Bridgestone."

Teammate Kimi Raikkonen finished the afternoon session down in 12th position, although the Finn played down his time and admitted he was still confident of a strong weekend.

"This morning things were not so bad, while in the afternoon I had a bit of a struggle to find the best settings on the car, which was not working as well as it had done at last week's test," said the Finn. "We have to look at the data to understand why.

"Obviously, the order in the second session is not representative of the relative strengths in the field. But I am still reasonably confident and if we manage to find a good set-up, then we can fight for the top places."