Sunday afternoon’s Brazilian Grand Prix was the end of an era for Cosworth as their involvement in the Formula One Championship series came to a close, and not the way they had hoped. Before the first laps were even completed, both Williams drivers, Mark Webber and Nico Rosberg had retired from the race and all their preparations for the season finale were gone in an instant.

The two drivers from Grove had an accidental coming together when Webber, who was ahead of Rosberg, braked earlier than expected causing Rosberg to make contact and damage the back of Webber’s car. As Webber came into the pits to retire, Nico continued on but he made a powerful impact with the wall just prior to the end of the lap that saw his FW28 disintegrate.

So, with seventy laps still to go, Cosworth’s dreams of ending their final race in Formula One on a high note had vanished….

“Not quite the way that we had envisaged our current involvement in Formula One to draw to a close, but I guess we can genuinely say that we ran both engines at 20,000RPM for the whole race! It really does not seem possible that there will be no Cosworth-powered cars in the F1 paddock in 2007,” said Chris Jilbert, Principal Engineer, F1 Race Engineering, Cosworth. “t is an incredibly sad day for everyone who has been involved in making our Cosworth F1 engines so powerful, reliable and successful and I’m sure that these comments will be echoed by the numerous people up and down the pit lane who have either worked at, or with, Cosworth in the past.”

“We pride ourselves on being world class and can proudly state that we have been able to deliver what is possibly the most powerful, most reliable engine in Formula One during the 2006 season, despite not having the backing of a manufacturer. Let’s hope that Cosworth can return to its rightful place on the grid in the future. My thanks go to everyone at Cosworth for all of their dedication, commitment and resolve through what has been a very difficult couple of months.”