Merc promises engine enquiry

"Kimi and David did everything right and were in good positions during the opening laps," said Mercedes motorsport boss Norbert Haug. "The engines will go back to Mercedes-Ilmor tonight to investigate the source of the failures, which we suspect was a problem with a batch of pistons from which all the engines for this race have been built."

Team boss Ron Dennis remained hopeful that a solution could be found by the engine people: "Of course it's painful not to finish races, but the most constructive way forward for the team is to analyse the problems and execute the engineering solutions."

Meanwhile it is getting hard for the drivers to look on the bright side in spite of an upturn in speed in the last two events.

"Obviously I'm extremely frustrated and disappointed," said Raikkonen. "I was at the front after getting past Sato and Trulli on the first lap and there was no doubt that things were looking good. We are making progress, but it's clear that we have to improve our reliability dramatically."

Coulthard retired from a promising position which would probably have yielded points, even though he had been forced to start at the back of the grid after reliability trouble in qualifying.

"The race was going well," said Coulthard. "I had a good start, making the most of other people getting in trouble on the first lap and went from 20th to ninth. As we were on a two stop strategy the car was heavy with fuel, but I believe we would have been in a good position to score some points.

"It's disappointing and nobody in the team is enjoying the situation at the moment, but we will all continue to work hard to make things better, and I'm confident that we will fight back."