Formula One: Brazilian Grand Prix: Montoya Signs Off in Style

Jenson Button's hopes of rounding off the season with the first victory of his formula one career ended in an expensive cloud of smoke here yesterday as his BAR-Honda rolled to a halt with a major engine failure only three laps into the race.

Button had qualified a promising fifth, but his Honda engine was already smoking ominously as the pack took up position on the starting grid and despite completing the opening lap in third place, he soon dropped back as the car lost power. Button eventually pulled up out on the track.

At the end of a week that had seen Button losing the chance to switch to the BMW-Williams team after the sport's contracts recognition board ruled that he was committed to stay with BAR next season, the 24-year-old Englishman was left to watch as the race unfolded into a battle between Montoya's Williams and Kimi Raikkonen, the man the Colombian will join at McLaren in 2005.

An early rain shower threw the race's pattern into disarray, but Raikkonen took the fight to Montoya's Williams FW26 after they raced wheel-to-wheel down the pit lane to resume the race after a tyre change on lap five, Montoya just getting ahead.

The defining moment of the race came when Raikkonen, leading by 19.2sec with 17 laps to run, made his second refuelling stop, allowing Montoya to squeeze back ahead by just 1.4sec.

For the remaining 16 laps Raikkonen hung on doggedly, launching one final challenge to close within half a second of the Williams on lap 59 before easing back slightly to cross the finishing line just 1.0sec behind after one of the best battles of the formula one year.

"I think it's unbelievable, to be honest," said Montoya. "It's been fantastic my four years with Williams - thanks Frank. The team did a fantastic job to call me in early enough [after the rain stopped] to change to slicks [dry weather tyres] and once I passed Kimi coming out of the pits that was it."

For Rubens Barrichello, third place in his Ferrari F2004 was a bitter disappointment after delighting the capacity Sao Paulo crowd by qualifying on pole position, but his car was particularly difficult to drive on intermediate tyres in the damp and he had a problem with his neck muscles on this punishing track, one of only two anti-clockwise circuits on the world championship schedule.

Michael Schumacher had come to Interlagos hinting strongly that he would be disposed to help his team-mate Barrichello in realising his aim to join the honour roll of Brazilian motor racing greats who have won their home grand prix.

It is now 31 years since Emerson Fittipaldi blazed a trail into the history books by winning the first world championship race to be held on the Interlagos track on the straggling outskirts of Brazil's second city.

For his part, Schumacher qualified at the back of the grid in 18th place after taking a 10-place grid penalty following a practice accident that wrecked his race car and forced him to switch to the spare.

After an early spin, the German recovered well and chased through to seventh place, hard on the heels of Fernando Alonso's Renault, Takuma Sato's BAR-Honda and his brother Ralf's Williams, the four cars taking the flag in nose-to-tail formation after the 71-lap race.

Undoubtedly the day's most poignant moment came on lap 23 when the two Jaguar R5s of Mark Webber and Christian Klien collided with each other as they tussled for minor placings going into the tight left-hander beyond the pits.

After Ford's decision last month to close or sell the team at the end of the season, this was the swansong for the liveried cars from Milton Keynes, but going out in a flurry of broken suspension and shattered carbon fibre was almost too much for some of the beleaguered team members to bear. Klien at least managed to get his car back to the pits for repairs, but Webber was left sitting at the edge of the track to reflect on his misfortune.