The Williams driver, along with Renault's Kevin Magnussen, was reprimanded after he exceeded the maximum time allowed between safety car lines on his in-lap at the end of Q2.

It was Massa's first reprimand of his career in Formula 1.

"I thought I was going to finish my career without a reprimand, but it was not possible," said Massa, who is retiring at the end of the season.

Explaining the issue he had, the Brazilian added: "We have a display in the steering wheel, but for whatever reason the display was not there for my in-lap.

"So I thought it was okay. I was slow but you always try to be as slow as you can and I thought it was no problem.

"There was nobody coming anyway. I was just too slow, but there was no reason for that. The rules are a little bit strange.

"If you see it, you just follow the delta, but we didn't have the delta and I was slower than what I was supposed to be."

Massa will start tomorrow's race from 12th on the grid after missing the cut to go into Q3.

The Williams driver admitted he did not expect the Haas cars to be so quick this weekend.

"The surprise was that Haas was very quick, quicker than we expected in the last races," he added.

"When we finished Q2 they were in front of us and they were in front of Force India as well and we couldn't pass, so without Haas we would have both cars into Q3."