Just when it looked as if Mark Webber was going to bring home some solid points for himself and the WilliamsF1 team, a problem to a pipe carrying water to the engine forced him out of the running with just eight laps remaining.

By all accounts, this was one of Mark’s best races of the season, the Aussie driver running as high as third at one point and his two stop strategy would have seen him in a very strong position when the chequered flag waved at the end of the 67 lap event, but it turned out to be another disappointing end.

Mark started eleventh and made up several positions on the opening lap and even enjoyed battles with the Renault drivers and eventual third place finisher, Kimi Raikkonen after the Finn pitted on lap 55. When the McLaren re-emerged on track after his stop, he was side by side with Webber going into the first corner, the Williams on the outside, but despite giving it his all Mark had to let the McLaren go through.

The following lap saw Mark’s time drop considerable and he was forced to limp back to the pits and retire with smoke coming from the rear of his FW28 and a small fire that was quickly doused by the pit crew.

“I had a good start from 11th and found myself in eighth position at the end of the first lap,” Mark said. “"During the first stint I knew I was on a different strategy to Rubens and that he had a car which could have probably lapped a second quicker than mine as I was going quite long. But, I enjoyed the fight with him! We stopped on lap 28 for the first time - which was on schedule - and by that stage we knew there was potentially a good result to be had, especially as we were racing the Renaults.”

"I caught and passed Giancarlo (Fisichella) who was having tyre problems around lap 40 and after that it was just a case of getting to the second stop as quickly as possible as I was now racing Kimi, who was on a three stopper. He came out of the pits after he made his final stop and we were side by side. But soon after that, I started to have a slight decrease in engine power as we were losing water from the engine. In the end, this proved to be terminal. It turns out we had a problem with one of the pipes that holds the water for the engine.”