Fernando Alonso blamed Toyota's Ralf Schumacher for wrecking his Hungarian Grand Prix hopes on Sunday.

"I was very surprised by how many movements Ralf was making into the first corner and he just didn't give me any room at all and hit the front wing," said Alonso.

Alonso and Schumacher started alongside each other on the third row and made contact as they fought for position, a glancing blow that forced the title favourite wide over the kerb.

Schumacher finished third and refused to let the incident cloud his first podium for the team he joined from Williams at the start of the year.

The German said he was not even aware of any incident.

"Nothing happened. I turned into the first corner. Was he there?" he told a news conference when asked about the incident.

Told that they had touched, he added: "I didn't realise that. I'm sorry."

Renault's head of engineering Pat Symonds said the contact had major consequences for the handling of Alonso's car over the remaining 69 laps.

"The damage sustained by the car after the front wing broke off led us to severely reduce his revs soon afterwards as the temperatures were too high," he said.

"We made a repair to the car on his second visit to the pits but the data also showed he had lost about seven per cent of total downforce in the incident.

"In total we think our measures were costing around 1.2 seconds a lap."