Nick Heidfeld's quest for more points ended in smoke yesterday. The German's exhaust overheated in the pit lane and upon exiting it caught fire. Heidfeld was disappointed with their result: "Not a good race for me today, and it's the second consecutive weekend without finishing, so obviously I'm very disappointed. My second pit stop was longer than expected, the car overheated and I noticed smoke coming from the rear. It worsened, and then I noticed the flames so I had to pull over at the end of the pit lane and cut my race short. The last couple of races have not been what I hoped for, but we have a few weeks now to reassess and come back stronger after the August break."

Renault's chief race engineer Alan Permane says that it was a little less spectacular than it looked: "A bad day for us. Nick had a very poor start and struggled in the wet conditions. In his second pit stop we had a problem with one of the wheel nuts meaning that the car was sat at high revs for a long time. This meant a build-up of heat which caused a fire. Although it looked spectacular it was only a small part of bodywork which burnt on the left-hand sidepod."