Felipe Massa

Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo has called Sunday’s inaugural Singapore Grand Prix a “humiliation” for the sport, claiming the track used for Formula One’s first night race would be “more suitable for staging a circus”.

The Italian team were on course for a probable one-two when Nelson Piquet’s crash brought out the safety car, triggering a sequence of events that shuffled Ferrari pair Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen to the back of the field and allowed Renault’s Fernando Alonso to win.

Di Montezemolo, who wants to discuss the regulations with fellow team principals, said: “Tracks such as Singapore would be more suitable for staging a circus. Anything can happen, because the safety car provides the spectacle and that is humiliating for F1.”

Massa’s problems enabled McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton to open up a seven-point championship lead with three races to go, but the British team’s chief executive, Martin Whitmarsh, concurs with Di Montezemolo that the safety car regulations are not ideal.

“I think they probably need to look at it,” Whitmarsh said. “It creates a bit of a lottery, but it’s one of those variables that tends to even out over the course of a season. In the case of Singapore, though, I think the incidents that unfolded helped create intrigue and spectacle that an event such as this deserved.”

Massa was leading and Raikkonen was closing on second-placed Hamilton when the safety car came out. The two Ferraris dived for the pits where Massa was mistakenly given a signal to go and dragged part of his refuelling rig with him. Raikkonen recovered to fifth, before crashing out in the closing stages, while Massa was classified 13th.