Head blasts fuelling rig reliability

Montoya was comfortably leading the race until his scheduled fuel stop. But problems with the fuel delivery system on the Colombian's rig meant he had to be fuelled from Ralf Schumacher's rig and was stationary for 30 seconds. He rejoined the race, but was sidelined by an engine failure believed to have been triggered by heat build-up during the pitstop.

Head is unimpressed by the Intertechnique equipment, which is supplied to the teams by the sport's governing body, the FIA, and is compulsory.

"Basically, the refuelling rig just shut down," he said at Hockenheim. "It's exactly the same controller for the motor that we had a problem with after the race at Magny-Cours. We used it after the race and it failed, when we were emptying the fuel rig. We delivered it back to Intertechnique, and they sent it back to us saying there's nothing wrong with it.

"We had to give back the one we'd borrowed from the FIA, take the other one back again, and it's done exactly the same thing it did to us last time. It's a software problem - the software is awful, terrible.

"Normally we have one rig for one car and one for the other, but now we're so concerned about the rigs that we always set them for the first driver and then re-set them so that we can swap either way."

Other teams have also suffered problems with the refuelling equipment, including Ferrari at Hockenheim, when Rubens Barrichello suffered a lengthy stop. Head noted that a complaint had been made at the last technical working group regarding the reliability of the Intertechnique rig, but so far with no response.