Fisi's bad weekend continues.

Giancarlo Fisichella headed to Imola buoyed by the knowledge that he had the new, lighter, B-spec Renault V10 to power his hopes of a return to the points, but the weekend turned out to be anything but a happy homecoming for the Italian.

Point-less from the previous two events, in Malaysia and Bahrain, Fisi was intent on restarting his season, and possibly closing the gap on team-mate Fernando Alonso, with a good result in the San Marino Grand Prix. However, his weekend got off to a poor start when a mechanical glitch caused him to lose time on his first qualifying lap, dropping the Renault well down the order, and the Italian never really recovered.

Having made up early ground in the race, he duly became the first retirement after hitting the barriers at Tamburello. Once again, however, the team is investigating to see whether a technical issue may have been to blame.

"I really don't know what happened this afternoon," Fisichella sighed, "I made a good start and was much quicker than Heidfeld, so I was just sitting behind him and waiting for the pit-stop. Then, going through turn two, I lost the rear end of the car and spun into the wall."

With Alonso winning his third race on the trot, the gap between Fisichella and the Spaniard is now 26 points, although Fisi remains in a tie for third overall.

"It is extremely disappointing [to end the weekend like this], because we had the pace again today to score some points," he summed up.