Montoya clinches third in standings

The Colombian's two rivals, David Coulthard and Ralf Schumacher, both retired, with Ralf missing out on a certain podium finish with just a handful of laps remaining. This ensured Montoya's best championship finish in a season in which he took eight poles but no wins.

"After Ralf's [engine] failure I was told to take it easy and this is what I did," he said. "I am obviously delighted that I have achieved third place in the drivers' championship in my second season in F1. It's been a good season and the only regret I have is that I could not get any race victories."

Ralf took Williams' sole win at Malaysia and was gutted to drop out with the finish almost in sight. Coulthard was running third in the early stages of the race, but the Scot was forced out after only seven laps.

"I would have liked to finish the season with a podium which I think would have been possible today, so obviously I'm disappointed," he said. "I had the pace and was able to open up a gap to the cars behind. However I lost throttle at turn nine, which I was told was due to a failure on one bank of the control system."

Kimi Raikkonen inherited the final podium position to cheer the McLaren pit.