Massa and team-mate Valtteri Bottas ran one-two in the opening stint of the previous race at Silverstone, but found themselves out of the points at the Hungaroring with Massa 12th and Bottas 13th.

“The pace was really, really bad,” said Massa. “I don’t know why.

“We were slow, especially me, behind in the traffic, especially with the prime [medium] tyres.

“I couldn’t drive at all, we were missing the overall grip on the car.

“I think maybe the best stint was the last one when I was free with the option [soft] tyres but even like that I was not quick.

“I was struggling a lot with the pace and not good at all.”

Williams’s car was not expected to be suited to the twisty nature of the Hungaroring, especially after both the team failed to score on the tight streets of Monaco.

But the concern for Williams performance chief Rob Smedley was the drop in form between qualifying and the race, after Bottas and Massa had started sixth and eighth respectively.

“I don’t think that we should start concentrating on it being a track layout thing or a slow speed thing,” he said.

“We know that this wasn’t going to be our best circuit, but all weekend we haven’t been as bad as we were on Sunday.

“So I think that we’ve got to go away and understand exactly what went wrong.

“Whether or not because of the cooler temperatures and therefore the cooler core or bulk temperatures, we generated more surface damage, more graining, more tearing in the compound is something we’ll have to go and see.”

Massa remains hopeful the team’s performance was a one-off and Williams will bounce back in Belgium.

“I’m 100 per cent confident [it was a one-off],” he said. “What happened I don’t think we will see every race.

“We were very strong at the last race, fighting for the podium, even for the first place.

“But we need to understand as we have another slow circuit, which is Singapore, coming up.

“So we have to do everything we can to be as competitive as we can.

“But we will have many good tracks. It’s definitely not a problem and I’m sure we will be back on our tracks that are good for us.”