Nelson Piquet Jr, who was charged with driving the R29, struggled to offer further insight.
The 21-year-old GP2 champion was third fastest behind Renault's Nelson Piquet Jr and Heikki Kovalainen on Thursday.
BBC: SPORT | Motorsport | Formula One | Hamilton enjoys McLaren session
Hamilton, along with every other driver in the race other than Renault's Nelson Piquet Jr, chose dry tyres.
Renault are hoping the R29 will allow Alonso and team-mate Nelson Piquet Jr to mount a serious challenge to front-runners McLaren and Ferrari.
Briatore was banned by motorsport's governing body, the FIA, for his part in ordering Nelson Piquet to crash in the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix.
In 1986, Williams had the fastest car but ended up losing the world championship because Nigel Mansell and Nelson Piquet took points off each other.
On Tuesday, the Italian saw an FIA ban for his part in Nelson Piquet Jr's deliberate crash at the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix overturned by a civil court.
"I was the one who, when the idea was first suggested to me by Nelson Piquet Jr, should have dismissed it immediately, " he wrote in a letter of mitigation.
Following Nelson Piquet Jr's dismissal by the team, the Brazilian revealed he had been asked to deliberately crash to help his then Renault team-mate Fernando Alonso win the race.
Ferrari's Massa had been comfortably leading the first-ever night Grand Prix when the safety car was deployed following a crash which saw Renault's Nelson Piquet Jr. hit a trackside wall.
Had Ecclestone's proposed system been in place in the past, the team he used to run, Brabham, would not have won the titles they clinched with Nelson Piquet in 1981 and '83.
But Symonds. who has been banned from Formula One for five years, claims driver Nelson Piquet Jr. first hatched the plan to deliberately crash to help teammate Fernando Alonso win the race.
That's just as well - because they look like needing every drop in the most competitive title run-in since the epic battle between Nigel Mansell, Nelson Piquet and eventual champion Alain Prost in 1986.
There were banners in the crowd imploring both Rubens Barrichello and Nelson Piquet Jr - or Nelsinho, as the locals have it - to crash into Hamilton and force him out of the race.
Nick Heidfeld of BMW took fifth after McLaren's Heikki Kovalainen suffered a puncture with 20 laps to go, with Toyota's Timo Glock and Renault's Nelson Piquet taking the final points positions in seventh and eighth.
Only recently Piquet was sacked by the team, with the suggestion it is the 24-year-old, or his father and manager Nelson Piquet snr, who has since blown the whistle, prompting an investigation, and now subsequent hearing.
He was cleared of any involvement in the recent race-fixing scandal, in which Renault were found to have asked his team-mate Nelson Piquet Jr to crash at the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix to aid Alonso's chances of victory.
Massa had been talking with local journalists ahead of Sunday's Brazilian Grand Prix about the series of events that culminated in Nelson Piquet Jr deliberately crashing his Renault in last year's Singapore Grand Prix, which helped Alonso to claim an unlikely victory.
But when Renault sacked Nelson Piquet Jr in July following a string of poor performances, the Brazilian's revelation that he deliberately crashed in Singapore last year to help team-mate Fernando Alonso win the race revived the sense that F1 has serious problems to address.
The FIA itself claims Piquet's father Nelson Sr alerted president Max Mosley to the possibility of a plot following last year's race but that, as his son was not willing to make a statement, the FIA could not proceed with an investigation without further evidence.
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