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Massa questions FIA stewarding

Laurence Edmondson at the Hungaroring
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Felipe Massa has suggested that the FIA needs to improve the quality of its stewards after they focused on whether he was to blame for his accident with Kevin Magnussen at the German Grand Prix.

The stewards in Germany did not penalise either of the cars involved, but according to their report they looked at whether Massa turned in on Magnussen at Turn 1 rather than whether Magnussen put his car in a dangerous position.

The report read: "The stewards took into account that this was the first turn of the first lap, cars 77 [Valtteri Bottas], 19 [Massa] and 20 [Magnussen] were entering Turn 1 and it appears the driver of car 19 was concentrating on car 77. There was no intentional turning in by car 19 on car 20. Car 19 's rear right wheels impacted with the left front of car 20."

Ahead of the Hungarian Grand Prix, Massa said the FIA needs to review its stewarding if they thought he might be to blame.

"You see, there is a lot to improve even in the FIA," he said when asked why the FIA investigated him and not Magnussen. "If the stewards are thinking like that, I don't know who they are taking to be stewards."

Massa did not want to dwell on the subject, but said the incident in Germany was proof that drivers had to focus on other drivers and not just their own race.

"Now I understand also that you not only need to drive for yourself but you need to think about what the others will do as well. I will not live and keep what happened in the last race inside my brain. You will not learn anything with that.

Pushed for his version of events now he has had a week to reflect on the accident, Massa said: "I think he was a little bit too aggressive. There were two cars there and he did not have the line to make the corner that quick, because he was on the inside line. At the end of the day, he also lost points because of that. It's not just me, for sure I lost but he also lost. I was very cautious in that corner, I backed off for Valtteri to go in front, I turned and I go but from my car it was impossible to know somebody was there. Impossible. I couldn't see. It was impossible to know someone was there. He was behind."

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