Following the safety car at mid-distance, Webber's Renault V8 began to put out smoke and sure enough a few laps later the RB4 was parked at the side of the circuit and out of the race.

Coulthard meanwhile lost ground at the start and then closed the door as he and Rubens Barrichello ran side-by-side through turn four. The two made contact and Coulthard would go on to finish 13th.

Mark Webber“We knew it would be a tight race with the guys that were around us on the grid. I had a good fight with Vettel on the first lap and, as the race unfolded, there wasn’t much between the cars. We know the weaknesses of our car here and we’ll work on those before the next race. It was my first mechanical retirement this year; we’ll have to check what caused it and make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

David Coulthard“It was a poor start. Heidfeld ran wide in Turn one, which pushed me wide and off the circuit, so a lot of people passed me there. I was stuck behind Jenson (Button) for 13 laps or so, he always seemed to have better traction so it was difficult to have a big dive at the end of braking. I got past him, as well as Rosberg before that. Towards the end of the race, Rubens (Barrichello) got better traction off a Turn and moved over, I came back onto my line to take the corner.  I guess he thought I wasn’t going to do that, which is why he had his car there, but it didn’t work out.”

Christian Horner, Team Principal“An extremely disappointing race. Both drivers didn’t have a fantastic first lap and lost positions. Thereafter, our strategy was looking reasonable. The pace car came at a pretty bad time for us and we had to pit both cars due to Glock’s accident. Mark unfortunately collected some debris, which damaged the oil cooler and caused engine oil loss. That resulted in us retiring his car. With David, after problems on the first lap, he was making progress through the field, but was compromised by the pace car and was then was hit by Barrichello, which meant the end of his afternoon.”

Fabrice Lom, Renault"A very disappointing race with both cars out of the points and one retirement due to an oil leak. It was a bad day. Congratulations though to Nelson – it was a very good result for him.”