APRIL 28, 2002

Minardi pulls out of Spanish GP!

PAUL STODDART, the boss of Minardi, withdrew his cars from the Spanish GP on Sunday morning following a rear wing failure on Mark Webber's car in the Sunday morning warm-up.

"The toughest decision a team boss has to make is to withdraw his cars on the grounds of safety," Stoddart said. "We are confident that we could have raced this afternoon but that would have been irresponsible. You cannot take chances. The wing had been tested at double the forces involved for the equivalent of 17 races but as we don't know why the failure happened and there is not time to investigate we are not going to race. We had a good weekend in Melbourne. This is a bad weekend."

It is not the first time that such a thing has happened. In March 2000 Sauber withdrew from the Brazilian Grand Prix on Saturday afternoon after a series of rear wing failures. The Swiss team also cited the lack of time for analysis of the problem as the reason for the withdrawal.