The Swiss based Sauber Petronas team managed to get one of their drivers across the finish line in this afternoon’s Hungarian Grand Prix, the final race before the enforced summer holiday when Brazilian racer Felipe Massa secured a fourteenth placed finish, despite suffering a small fire due to overheating ignition coils.

“To begin with things were okay. I made a great start and was running comfortably in the top 10, but three laps before my second scheduled pit stop the car went on to what felt to me like eight cylinders - like I was testing for next year!” he explained. “When I was called into the pits on lap 43 there was a small fire but that was okay. My crew put it out very quickly. What caused the delay was having a set of new spark coils fitted. After that I went back out and the car was okay again, but I had lost far too much time to achieve anything meaningful. A shame, because once again the race balance was good."

Meanwhile, teammate Jacques Villeneuve was forced to retire after 57 laps with suspected fire damage after he too suffered with overheating spark coils.

"It was a hot, disappointing race, particularly as we will now have bad qualifying starting positions in Turkey. We tried to make the finish to improve that situation, but unfortunately I was unable to make it home,” he said. “I had the same problem as Felipe, losing power because of an overheating spark coil, but otherwise the car was strong today. Our strategy was good and it looked quite promising that we could challenge for points at one stage. Now the summer break will help everyone in the team, and we will try again in Turkey."

"We suffered spark coil problems on both cars this afternoon, Felipe and Jacques each losing power and experiencing small underbonnet fires during their pit stops when there was no airflow over the cars,” added Willy Rampf. “The temperatures beneath the engine covers were very high. In Felipe's case we changed the coils and he resumed the race after a delay; in Jacques' we think that the fire damaged other components and led to his subsequent retirement. We will check the data to determine the cause when we get back to Hinwil and to find a solution for the next race in Istanbul, which will be even hotter."

Source: Sauber