Massa: Max’s driving pretty dangerous

Felipe Massa believes Max Verstappen was "lucky" he didn't pick up a serious injury following his collision with Romain Grosjean in Monaco, adding that the rookie's driving was "pretty dangerous".

Verstappen walked away uninjured despite smashing into the barriers at high speed at Ste Devote after clipping the back of Grosjean's Lotus with 15 laps still to go.

The 17-year-old blamed the Frenchman for the incident saying he "caught me by surprise" as he "clearly braked 10-15 metres earlier".

However, the stewards disagreed and handed the Toro Rosso driver a five-place grid penalty for the Canadian GP and added two penalty points on his licence.

Massa, who has in the past been very critical when rookies are too aggressive on track, believes Verstappen was clearly at fault and it shows that "experience counts in F1".

"I would say what for me was pretty dangerous was the accident with Verstappen," he is quoted as saying by Motorsport.com.

"He's supposed to get a penalty for what he did. He braked behind, much later and what happened was very dangerous.

"It shows maybe that experience counts in Formula 1 and I think to teach about this type of accident, they need to control better because it was very dangerous.

"He is lucky he was not hurt. He could have been very hurt after what happened."

He added: "To be honest, he was not in the position to overtake, he was not even near to go inside. He was behind, so to be honest, it was too much what happened."

Massa warned Verstappen that he needs to be more careful at such a young age.

"I think it was very dangerous for him, to be honest, because he is 17," the Brazilian said. "If he is hurt then everybody will talk about it.

"They will say, why give the licence to a guy who is 17 and he is doing that? But he is not hurt, and everybody is happy. They need to do things in a better way."