Speed laments early exit

The Toro Rosso driver was hit from behind by Spyker's Adrian Sutil, forcing the American into a spin that cut his engine, leaving him stranded on track.

The incident, in which was also involved Jenson Button, forced the race director to deploy the safety car.

"That was a short race. I got hit from behind at Turn 12 and I don't know who by," said Speed. "In any case the engine cut out while the car was still spinning so I couldn't do anything about it. Jenson thought he hit me, but actually I don't think we touched.

"Something like this is a shame, because we are still at a stage where we need to do as many miles as possible to develop the car, so stopping on lap 1 isn't really doing us any favours."

Teammate Tonio Liuzzi completed a poor day for Toro Rosso, the Italian retiring with a  hydraulics problem.

"We had all sorts of problems today," Liuzzi said. "It was a hydraulics problem that put me out, but before that we had a radio problem, so when I overtook Ralf I was unaware it was a Safety Car period as I had no communication with the team.

"That meant I got a drive-through penalty. A shame, as I started out on hard tyres for a very short stint, gambling on the Safety Car coming out. As I think I was the only one starting on hards, it could have paid off for us very well."