BMW traces Montoya failure to faulty connector

The Munich marque is confident that this was a one-off failure, which led to Montoya's V10 engine blowing up, and that it can give Williams the reliability it needs to score its first points this weekend.

"It was a faulty pipe connector between the oil tank and engine, which from a certain point on simply didn't supply the V10 with enough oil," explained BMW motorsport director Dr Mario Theissen. "Despite this, it is fair to say that in Melbourne our engines were strong and that during the whole weekend we didn't experience the smallest technical problem on our side."

Theissen says his team of engineers have worked hard to ensure that its V10 units, which were very impressive through the speed traps in Melbourne, will have staying power as well as horsepower.

"As neither of our cars could finish the race and therefore we could not prove the reliability of the V10 over a Grand Prix, durability remains the main priority," he added. "For this reason we have some further improvements ready for Sepang. On such a track with two long straights, the engine performance plays an important role and we think that we are quite well equipped for that. Another point, is the heat that we have to expect in Malaysia. At Kyalami [in South Africa] we at least had the opportunity to test under similar temperature conditions."

Montoya says that he "feels ready" for this weekend's race, even though he has never raced at the Malaysian venue.

"It looks a quite difficult circuit to learn but I think we should be all right," said the Colombian. "I have spent the last week watching on-board camera recordings of last year's race, I've studied the telemetry data and have also driven many laps on video games. I feel ready for it."