Raikkonen hit by wing failure

The failure was similar to the one that occured on Mark Webber's Minardi in the morning warm-up. Raikkonen ploughed through the gravel at Turn 1 but made it back to the pits and retired.

"I don't know what happened," said the Finn, "but it suddenly just flew off on the straight. These things are pretty rare, so I'm not worried about it and I'm sure that the team will find the cause."

The McLaren was running fourth at the time. When asked what caused it, technical director Adrian Newey explained that it looked like a structural failure in the lower part of the wing, which caused the upper element to collapse.

While Minardi decided not to race because of its three wing failures over the weekend, McLaren chose to keep David Coulthard's car out on the track. The Scot went on to finish third.

Newey said: "We were worried, yes. It looked like a fatigue failure, so we looked at the mileage records. Kimi's wing had higher mileage than David's, so we kept him out."

Newey said Coulthard had no say in the decision, but the Scot agreed with the call anyway. "There was no reason for me to stop," said Coulthard. "We haven't had a wing failure all year. This was just an example of the stresses and strains of GP racing."

Team boss Ron Dennis explained: "Kimi's wing failure was frustrating but within less than a minute we were able to interrogate our database and confirm that the wing assembly on David's car was effectively new. Supported by our extensive test mileage, we were convinced that there was no risk to him."