Soon after the impact – frontal crash into the barriers – Massa looked unconscious and was not able to climb out of the cockpit. A few minutes later, the safety car came to the place of the accident and checked his medical state, after which the Brazilian was carried to the circuit’s medical centre.
A helicopter transported the Ferrari driver to a hospital in Budapest some 10 minutes after the crash.
After further checks from the race officials, it seems the Brazilian was hit by a shock absorber coming from Rubens Barrichello’s BGP 001. Seconds before Massa hit the barriers, the Brawn GP officials let Barrichello know that a piece of his car’s rear suspension was dropped on the track. It was the exact piece that struck Massa’s head on the straight line before Turn 4.
It is believed the Ferrari driver lost consciousness before entering Turn 4 and couldn’t avoid the impact. Further information are yet to be released by the Hungarian & Ferrari officials.
The bad luck for the Hungarian organizers did not end there, however, as all the computers at the Hungaroring stopped working in the final stages of Q3. Renault’s Fernando Alonso scored his first pole position in 2009, followed by the Red Bull duo Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber.
Lewis Hamilton, Nico Rosberg, Heikki Kovalainen, Kimi Raikkonen, Jenson Button and Kazuki Nakajima completed the top 9.
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