Point relief for Raikkonen

Raikkonen had an overnight engine change, which demoted him to the tail of the field, and produced a solid drive to eighth. He also had the suffer the ignominy of being lapped by race winner Michael Schumacher.

"I'm pleased to finish my first race of the season and get one point, but obviously we want to be fighting for the lead and not eighth place," said Raikkonen. "I started the race from last, so I had to fight hard to make up some positions. The track is very narrow, so it's quite difficult to overtake and when you are so far back you inevitably get stuck. I know that the team will continue to work hard on improving our package and making further progress both with pace and reliability."

Team-mate David Coulthard suffered a nightmare start when he lost his front wing against the rear-end of Fernando Alonso's Renault.

"When you start in the middle of the field you have to take risks coming into the first corner in order to make progress," said Coulthard. "On this occasion I took too much of a risk and ended up damaging the nose of the car and going off the track. I fought hard, but 12th was the best we could do."

Team principal Ron Dennis added: "The problems we experienced in practice with Kimi and the first corner incident with David effectively meant that we raced from the back of the grid which is an unusual and a not to be repeated experience for the team. However we can take some comfort from our pace mid-race and the reliability of the cars."