Referring to his first few years in the sport, with Sauber in the early 2000s,
Massa continued: “Honestly I don’t remember in the past that this type of
accident happening all the time.
“I was young and I even crashed many times, but I don’t remember following
different rules to the ones we have.
“I don’t remember myself, Kimi [Raikkonen], Fernando [Alonso], being involved
as young drivers in so many things like that.
“But anyway, it is just the way I think: I am not saying the young drivers
don’t have the talent to be in F1, it is very good talent. But sometimes you
need to understand that you cannot win the race at the first corner.”
He said he would tell Magnussen to “take it easy”.
The Dane always insisted he was blameless and simply followed his racing line,
and the stewards appeared to support that argument.
The stewards’ report read: “Cars 77 [Valtteri Bottas), 19 [Massa] and 20
[Magnussen] were entering turn one and it appears that car 19 [Massa] was
concentrating on car 20 [Bottas]. There was no intentional turning in by car
19 on car 20.”
Eric Boullier, McLaren’s
racing director, gained a reputation for successfully nurturing young
drivers such as Romain Grosjean in his time at Lotus. The Frenchman was
quick to jump to Magnussen’s defence.
“There was a driving conduct investigation and the report makes it clear that
Kevin was 100 per cent blameless,” he said.
Meanwhile, Mercedes
boss Toto Wolff will still be running the show in Hungary this weekend
despite fracturing his shoulder, collarbone, elbow and wrist in a team
cycling accident.
“We’ve decided to leave it to the professionals now,” Wolff joked. “Lewis
[Hamilton] and Nico [Rosberg] are better wheel to wheel at 300 km/h than we
are at 30 km/h.”