Starting from a promising eighth and 18th starting positions on the grid, both drivers managed a clean start but it was in the first corner that chaos erupted. Felipe’s strong attack off the starting line unfortunately resulted in a collision with Nick Heidfeld’s Williams while Jacques’ conservative approach lost him a few places.

Coming in for a quick fix, the team changed Massa’s pit stop strategy to a single stop while Jacques continued to charge forward as planned. While Massa was able to run competitively during early part of the race, albeit from the back, Jacques had his hands full trying to overtake the Minardis and Jordans. Once he did however, the world champion was matching the pace of Ralf’s Toyota which he successfully kept at bay to finally cross the finish line in 11th.

Meanwhile, despite the crash and an early pit stop, Felipe was running competitively and was hoping to finish in the points. However, the Brazilian’s luck ran out in lap 28 when his engine overheated and resulted in a massive loss of power to end his challenge in Istanbul.

Jacques Villeneuve said, “At the first corner everybody was going four abreast so I backed off a little. I could see somebody was going to get into trouble. Unfortunately that put me behind the Jordans and the Minardis. Their tyres warmed up quicker than mine did and the problem was that they were getting down the straights faster so it was really difficult initially to get past them. Once I did the pace was reasonable and I had no problem keeping ahead of Ralf, but in any case I think it would have been very difficult to score points today.”

Felipe Massa said, “I tried to get down the inside of Nick at the start, but when he moved left to defend I had to go off the circuit and he just caught my front wing, which I then ran over. I lost one of my turning vanes as a result, and a lot of time. Despite that, the car was really, really good after I pitted for a new nose and wing. We changed our strategy to a one stop refuelling and even with a lot of fuel aboard I could do very competitive lap times. It might even have been possible to do something good despite the crash but then I started to lose power, and my race was over.” Technical Director Willy Rampf said, “This was a disappointing result when you think what Felipe might have achieved without that first-lap crash. After he rejoined the race we were happy with his car’s performance and overall we could have had a very competitive race, but then he encountered a problem in the engine and had to stop. Jacques started far back after his misfortune yesterday and lost a lot of time initially behind slower cars. Once he overtook them and could drive at his own pace it was good, but by then he was too far back to challenge for points. We are confident of a better result at Monza.”