Heidfeld Rues Missed Opportunity

Heidfeld, who had finished second in Monaco and the Nurburgring, was looking set to score a strong result despite having started the race from 12th position.

The Williams driver, however, saw his BMW engine expire with 43 laps gone.

"My starting position wasn't good but, in hindsight, not being able to finish the race is even more disappointing," said Heidfeld. "Because many of the cars that were in front of me didn't see the chequered flag, I could have been on the podium today.

"I had a good start, and a reasonably good race, but I was following Felipe Massa for too long trying to overtake him. This severely limited the cooling of my engine and eventually caused it to overheat and fail. I tried to pull over to the side a few times to get out of his slipstream but it still wasn't enough."

Mark Webber was the sole point scorer for Williams today, the Australian coming home in fifth place, nearly a minute behind race winner Kimi Raikkonen.

Following his disappointing qualifying, Webber welcomed the points.

"There's no doubt that finishing fifth having started from 14th position is a good result," said Webber. "The first part of every stint was quite tricky because the tyre warm up was difficult, especially in the breaking area. This is why I slid wide twice with very poor grip.

"The car was better to drive as the fuel load lessened. But again, when the safety car came out it was difficult to keep the tyre temperatures up but I managed to get back into shape as soon as it went in. Then, it was just a matter of getting to the end of the race.

"We managed to get something good out of an average weekend and this is what counts, four points and a decent starting position for my qualifying in Indy next week."