Minardi withdraws from Spanish GP.

The KL Minardi Asiatech team has taken the tough decision to pull both its cars out of this afternoon's Spanish Grand prix following a series of front and rear wing failures in practice and qualifying.

Two front wing failures on Saturday prompted the Anglo-Italian outfit to send all items back to its factory in Faenza overnight, but a subsequent problem, which saw mark Webber lose his rear wing at speed in the morning warm-up today, has since forced team boss Paul Stoddart to call a complete halt to participation in the event.

"The incident today on Mark's car has left the team feeling that we have no option other than to withdraw from this afternoon's race," Stoddart told journalists, "Although we're confident that we could have run this afternoon very safely, given the circumstances, it would have been irresponsible to do so until we've had time to take these parts back to the factory.

"The failure occurred along a stress line on the rear wing. This design has run both in testing and at every race this year without any problems whatsoever. This particular element has been stressed to double the known load expected at this circuit, which is one of the worst for wings," he said.

"We had a good weekend in Melbourne, this has now turned out a bad one, but, rest assured, that, by the time we get to Austria, the problem will be gone."

Webber and team-mate Alex Yoong - who both lost front wings in separate incidents on Saturday - had qualified on the back row of the grid for the race.