Williams rues its luck at Spa

Pizzonia was the first to face trouble while running behind the second safety car. The Brazilian lost his gears and with it the drive on the FW26, it brought Pizzonia's race to a premature end on a day that he wanted to prove himself worthy of a race seat in 2005 with the expected return of Ralf Schumacher to the Williams cockpit at the next race in Monza.

"What a shame!" said a disappointed Pizzonia. "I hadn't had the smallest problem with my car all race and then, suddenly, I lost all the gears when I was running third. Bad day for the team and it's a true pity that Juan Pablo failed to finish too, but this is motor racing, isn't it? I came to Spa thinking that I could achieve my first podium in F1 here and I proved this was possible, but I was hoping for a better outcome. Still, today we showed a strong performance and this is what we have to take away form here."

As Pizzonia went out, through went team-mate Montoya to occupy the final podium slot. But a tyre failure on the Colombian's car just laps from the chequered flag left him with the same fate as Pizzonia.

"Bad luck again, today." Montoya said. "The car was really good and I was having a good race and running third with a few laps to go, but then the right rear tyre failed, and some other parts of the car were damaged forcing me to retire. That's racing, what can you do? It's not the first time that this has happened and probably not the last, but one has to accept it."

Technical chief Sam Michael added: "For us, it was obviously a disappointing race in terms of the final results. However, it was encouraging competing at the front again, while our cars where running. Antonio drove well and Juan Pablo showed his overtaking skills again. Antonio lost drive on his car and had to stop on the track. On Juan's car, we had a tyre failure which damaged the rear suspension and the rear wing. He managed to drive the car back to the pits but could not continue."