Thursday 28 August at 12:29 : Ferrari's highest-placed championship contender, Felipe Massa, is confident the Italian team has overcome its engine reliability problems of recent races.

The Brazilian's V8 power plant failed almost within sight of the Budapest chequered flag, and last Sunday at Valencia his teammate Kimi Raikkonen exited the race with a near-identical broken conrod.

But Massa, 27, said that the fresh engine he used at Valencia contained a conrod component, supplied by a third party, that was not from the same bad batch.

Ferrari, meanwhile, elected to take the risk with Raikkonen's engine at Valencia rather than fit another one and take a costly ten-place penalty.

"Now the batch of 'cursed' conrods is no longer being used and we have instigated very close controls on the parts we are using," Massa, who on Wednesday opened the Monza group test with the fastest time, said.

"I hope the problem has gone away for both of us," he added.

Team boss Stefano Domenicali told Italy's La Gazzetta dello Sport: "The failure will not be repeated."