Williams Juan Pablo Montoya benefitted from the two Safety Car periods in today's Austrian Grand Prix, when he pipped Ralf Schumacher to third place in their only round of pit stops in the final laps of the race.

The Safety Car was called out after Olivier Panis' car seized on the pit straight and Nick Heidfeld and Takuma Sato had a massive accident just a few laps later, which required some medical attention for the Jordan driver.

"The safety car today decided the race, actually it made my race," Montoya said in a press release. "I lost some time at the start due to the high fuel load but I had decided to go as far as I could before the pit stop and that paid off.

"Our decision to go for the hard tyres also paid off. The tyres were very consistent and I could keep them on until the end of the race. With regards to the accident between Heidfeld and Sato I was very lucky because my car wasn't touched at all. I was on the inside of Sato then I heard a big bang but I couldn't even see what had happened."

Schumacher was fourth after chasing his Colombian team mate hard to the chequered flag. "For me everything was just perfect - the car, the engine, the tyres and the pitstop. I think that without the safety car periods I could have defended my third position," he commented.

"Due to the action packed race and the different strategies it is difficult to say how big Ferrari's advantage really was here on the A1-Ring. We have to continue to work hard, this much is clear."

Chief operations engineer Sam Michael added: "First of all I hope that Sato is okay. Regarding our team it was well done from Juan Pablo and from Ralf, both did a good job today.

"I think our strategy with one stop each was the right one, but of course we did not take into account the two safety car periods. During the second safety car we might have had a chance to change our schedule a little bit by calling Ralf in earlier.

"But we had to keep the pit lane clear because it looked at that time as if Juan had a problem with a damaged front wing. In fact it was okay. At the end of the day both of our drivers had solid drives."

The team will be testing at Valencia from the 14-18 May with Antonio Pizzonia, Marc Gene and Ralf Schumacher.