Massa backtracks on Kimi claim.

Felipe Massa endured a difficult time in Thursday's official press conference at Spa-Francorchamps, after inadvertently letting slip that Kimi Raikkonen's Monza practice accident could have been more than just driver error.

Ferrari maintained throughout the Italian Grand Prix weekend that the Finn had lost control on a bump in the braking zone for the Ascari chicane - something that Raikkonen could not be bothered to refute - but Massa dropped a clanger during the press conference when he suggested that it could have been related to his suspension problem on race day.

Felipe Massa endured a difficult time in Thursday's official press conference at Spa-Francorchamps, after inadvertently letting slip that Kimi Raikkonen's Monza practice accident could have been more than just driver error.

Ferrari maintained throughout the Italian Grand Prix weekend that the Finn had lost control on a bump in the braking zone for the Ascari chicane - something that Raikkonen could not be bothered to refute - but Massa dropped a clanger during the press conference when he suggested that it could have been related to his suspension problem on race day.

"I had a problem with the rear damper, [which] just locked, so the car was bottoming quite heavily," he revealed, "First of all, I thought it was a puncture and then I called the team straight away saying that I had a big problem with the rear of the car and it was not possible to even do one corner. When I went into a corner, the car was jumping on the ground and you couldn't drive, so I asked straight away if I could pit and they changed the tyres, but the problem was not with the tyres. It was a big shame."

Massa, who posted one of only two retirements in the Italian race, insisted that the problem was purely mechanical and not something that had been brought on by Ferrari's efforts to keep up with McLaren.

"It had nothing to do with the kerbs, we had a big problem on the damper," he maintained, "I don't really need to say what caused the problem, but it is a problem with the damper, nothing to do with the kerbs... nothing to do with the start, nothing to do with the way we were driving. It is something that happens."

Having suggested that he thought that the problem could have caused Raikkonen's off, Massa then spent the rest of the session attempting to backtrack on what he had said.

"When he had an accident, he didn't have any problem with the damper like I had," he claimed, contradicting himself, "We didn't find any problem in the car, the engineer explained. It was a different problem, so it was not related to the car. When we had the problem, [the damper] was completely blocked, it was broken."

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