Williams Endure Brazilian Nightmare

In a crash that brought out the safety car for one lap, Brazilian Antonio Pizzonia hit the Red Bull of Briton David Coulthard and then his own Australian team mate Mark Webber.

"I got away okay down to the first corner," said Webber, who stepped out of his car in the pits after two laps.

"David and Antonio touched and then Antonio sped into the right of me."

Webber later rejoined 25 laps behind, after mechanics had worked on the car, in an attempt to secure a better qualifying position for the next race, which is in Japan.

"The innocent party here was Mark who was on the inside," Coulthard told Britain's ITV television.

"I got my front wheels in front of his and Antonio's. Antonio was coming to the left, I couldn't go to the left because Mark was there and all three of us went out."

It was the second race in a row that Pizzonia, a stand-in for injured German Nick Heidfeld at the underperforming BMW-powered team, had failed to finish.

At the last Belgian Grand Prix he ran into the back of McLaren's Colombian Juan Pablo Montoya, despite being a lap down, depriving that Championship-challenging team of what would have been their first one-two finish in five years.

Montoya won last year's season-ending Brazilian Grand Prix for Williams before moving to McLaren.