DC: BAR catalyst for shunt

Fisichella's Sauber was launched over the back of Coulthard's car after the blown engine of Takuma Sato's Honda had caused a huge plume of smoke which reduced visibility to virtually nothing. DC says BAR should have told Sato to pit if they knew it was a terminal problem, just like McLaren did with Kimi Raikkonen later in the race.

"I was a little bit frustrated because I could see that Sato's engine was smoking from the parade lap," said Coulthard. "Our team retired Kimi when they knew he had an engine problem because it was just too risky to allow a car to run and blow up on the track.

"If the Honda engineers knew their engine was experiencing difficulties it's the only professional thing to do because the result of leaving the car out there, and eventually blowing up, was that a number of cars had an incident. One guy was upside down, and they have to understand the consequence of running at the front, they are up there, and doing a great job, but maybe they could be a bit sharper there."

Coulthard explained his own view of what it was like to plunge into a wall of opaque smoke.

"I ducked into the inside and was going really slowly," he said. "Montoya pulled up alongside me, and then Fisi just came over the back of the car. I could see he was upside down, and I was obviously very concerned for him, so I'm glad to hear he's okay.

"It was actually very confusing as we could see a red flag shown, so normally that would mean a restart and then they flew a safety car flag. I think the organisers made a call, but in the end the safety car was absolutely adequate. Still, when you see a red flag drivers automatically think the race is stopped."