Yoong: third was ours

Yoong went off at the first chicane at approximately 5:15 am, and the car was too badly damaged to be able to return to the pits for repairs.

"Third was for us," Yoong told autosport.com. "I don't feel that running so well feels like a positive right now, but we were running so well. Third place was ours for the taking. We had five laps on the other Audi.

"If we had kept going then something else could have happened and then who knows. It would have been really nice to have finished on the podium, and the team had worked so hard. A big thank-you to them."

Yoong explained that the crash was caused by his throttle jamming.

"I was going into the chicane, and I went down to second gear and the throttle just stuck open," he added.

"Because it is a pneumatic gear-change and when the valves starts going the blipper sticks open. So it just blipped open. And I just went straight off.

"I went in head-first and that broke the steering arm on both wheels so I couldn't steer the thing."