Davidson's hopes go up in smoke

The Super Aguri driver admitted however that it had been his best Formula One race.

"This was my best Formula One race to date; it was really good fun," said Davidson. "I was in the middle of the action all the time and people were driving very cleanly, but hard. The pitstops were good and everything went to plan. 

"The strategy was working quite well and then right towards the end of the race I obviously saw some smoke coming out of the back of the engine; felt it slow down and the team told me to stop.

"It was good day nonetheless; the car felt good, it had a nice balance on both sets of tyres."

Teammate Takuma Sato endured similar misfortune when his power engine blew up spectacularly on the main straight on lap 35.

"Today was not a good day for us," said Sato. "I made a very positive race start and moved up some places, but I was struggling for grip once again. The car was very unstable throughout the race, so I was really struggling and I felt power loss from the engine half way through.

"Obviously in the end we had some kind of engine failure and it was a shame that we couldn't finish the race. However, the team did a great job over these first three flyaway races and I think we have to go back a long time to when we last did not finish a race."