Williams driver Felipe Massa believes a slow pit stop cost him a shot at winning the Canadian Grand Prix.
The Brazilian had been running fifth before his contact with Sergio Perez took them both out of the race on the final lap, but had his first stop gone to plan, he says he would never have been in that position to begin with as he would likely have been ahead of eventual race winner Daniel Ricciardo.
“Honestly, I was the quickest car on the track most of the time,” he said. “Not with the supersoft – on that tyre I had a similar pace to Valtteri [Bottas] – but with the prime the car was amazing, really, really quick.
“Without this problem in the pit-stop, I think it was totally possible to be in front of Ricciardo. It was possible to win the race,” he added.
Speaking about the race, Massa admitted he never knew how close he was to winning at the time, as his team chose not to relay information about Lewis Hamilton’s retirement or Nico Rosberg’s problems.
“I wasn’t thinking about the victory. I couldn’t see the Mercedes [of Nico Rosberg in the lead] very well and I didn’t see that Lewis [Hamilton] had retired, so I thought it was a fight for the podium. They didn’t tell me about the Mercedes problems.”
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