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Williams' Felipe Massa believes he could have won Sunday's Canadian Grand Prix had it not been for a botched pit stop earlier in the race.

Massa retired on the final lap after an accident with Sergio Perez, but had been closing on the leaders in the final stages of the race and was challenging Perez for fourth when they clashed. However, at the first pit stops Massa dropped from fifth to 11th as his team struggled to fit his front left tyre and he believes that took him out of contention for the victory.

"Honestly, I was the quickest car on the track most of the time," he said. "Not with the supersoft - on that tyre I had a similar pace to Valtteri [Bottas] - but with the prime the car was amazing, really, really quick. Without this problem in the pit-stop, I think it was totally possible to be in front of [race winner Daniel] Ricciardo.

"We lost a lot of points. We had an incredible car, and I'm so disappointed because it would have been a fantastic race. No problems at all in the car and it was a good track for us, so we missed so much. It was possible to win the race. When I was in free air I was the quickest car on the track so it was a big opportunity, but we have a very good car so I hope we can be competitive again like we were today."

However, Massa said he was not aware of how close he was to the front of the pack towards the end of the race.

"I wasn't thinking about the victory. I couldn't see the Mercedes [of Nico Rosberg in the lead] very well and I didn't see that Lewis [Hamilton] had retired, so I thought it was a fight for the podium. They didn't tell me about the Mercedes problems."

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