» Heavy crashes for Barrichello and Hülkenberg

Better call in the boys and girls from CSI!

Crash investigations look set to continue at the Williams team’s Grove HQ once the wrecks of Nico Hülkenberg and Rubens Barrichello are returned to the factory.

The German rookie was the first retirement of the race, triggering the first Safety Car appearance when he slammed into the outer wall of the tunnel.

Barrichello’s crash at Beau Rivage triggered another Safety Car appearance, when a failure at the left-rear corner sent the Brazilian backwards into the barriers at high speed.

“[Nico] had a failure with the front wing mounting on the first lap of the race,” said the team’s Technical Director, Sam Michael.

"Rubens had a fantastic start and was running in sixth when he started to experience poor handling after his stop. Eleven laps after his pit-stop, he had a failure at the rear end of his car.

"We need to get all the parts back to the factory in order to identify correctly what components on both cars caused the failures. We have quite a bit of car damage to repair but we’re making progress with performance and look to further that in Istanbul."

In addition to the considerable repair bill to repair both bent cars, the team will need to replace Rubens’ steering wheel, which was inadvertently run over by another car while the Brazilian was extricating himself from the wrecked FW32.

“I throw (sic) the steering cause wanted to get out as soon as possible. After the shunt I was facing the wrong side of the track and the car was on fire,” Rubens wrote on his Twitter feed.