Briatore: Hungary a One-Off for Renault

Neither Championship leader Fernando Alonso or teammate Giancarlo Fisichella were able to finish in the points after suffering a host of problems in the race.

Briatore said: "Neither driver managed to have a clean race this afternoon, and both had problems with the car: Fernando was overheating and had some damage after lap one, while Fisico had a fuel pressure problem when he could maybe have caught Sato at the end.

"Obviously, we can't be happy with this result but I think it was a one-off for us, honestly, and we look forward to taking the three week break to come back refreshed in Turkey, and to continue improving the car. Today was just one of those days."

Preliminary investigations by the team about the problems suffered by their drivers  showed that neither had a realistic chance of claiming any points. Director of engineering Pat Symonds said: "Giancarlo's race this afternoon was compromised in the first stint when he got stuck behind Heidfeld.

"He was much quicker but could not get past and unfortunately, the time deficit by the time of his first stop was too big to handle. On top of this, we had to alter his strategy with an additional stop on the final lap when he began losing fuel pressure.

"Fernando was involved in a collision with Ralf Schumacher) on the opening lap which not only required a nose change, but 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.

"We made a repair to the car on his second visit to the pits, but the data also showed he had lost about 7% of total downforce in the incident - a significant amount at a circuit where downforce is key. In total, we think these measures were costing around 1.2 seconds a lap."