Minardi Withdraw from the Spanish GP

Minardi withdrew from the Spanish Grand Prix on Sunday because of fears that their front and rear wings are unstable.

Two crashes on Saturday saw the team's front wings fail and a further incident in the warm-up for the race resulted in the rear wing flying off Mark Webber's car.

Team boss Paul Stoddart admitted after qualifying on Saturday that all the team's front wings had been sent back to the factory at Faenza in Italy for a modification, but the team decided to withdraw on Sunday morning following the incident with Webber.

"This particular wing has been stressed to two times the load of what was expected at this circuit," Stoddart said. "Why it happened I feel is a one-off manufacturer problem."

Nevertheless, Stoddart said the team would not be racing as a measure of precaution. "This has been a tough decision and I really feel for Mark and Alex (Yoong). This has not been a good weekend for the team.

"After the amount of effort involved with modifications to the front wing it is disappointing this incident has happened, but we have to pull out on safety grounds. It would have been irresponsible to continue until we had been able to take everything back to the factory and investigate the problem."