Ahead of the British GP, Kimi Raikkonen looks set to take advantage of the new rule which allows each driver one engine change without penalty.

The 2007 World Champion looked set to take an easy victory in yesterday's French GP, until a broken exhaust cost him the win and two precious championship points. However, against all the odds the Finn nursed his car home, taking second place, 17s behind his Ferrari teammate, but 28s clear of third placed Jarno Trulli.

At one stage, the Finn was losing over a second a lap to Trulli, who looked set to overtake the World Champion before the end of the race. However, despite finally losing the exhaust, the problem stabilised, allowing Raikkonen to maintain the gap to his teammate, while Trulli was kept occupied by Heikki Kovalainen.

"It is disappointing not to win but eight points is good for the championship," said Raikkonen at the end of the race. "The exhaust broke and it changes all the settings and you burn a big hole on the side of the car. In the last few laps it almost stopped a few times so I think a few more laps and we would not have finished the race. Luckily the car was strong enough and it lasted, so even with the broken exhaust we were still fast enough and we had enough gap to the third place so we were able to keep the second place."

Subsequently, team boss Stefano Domenicali, admitted that Silverstone, McLaren and Lewis Hamilton's home race, might be the ideal time to take advantage of the new rule.

"After such a heavy race from the middle to the end, it is very likely that we will need to change it. So we need the joker," said the Italian "We will do the analysis later on tomorrow, there's no rush to do anything more than eventually change it when we go to Silverstone.

"We had almost half of the race with all the breaking parts," he added, "so it will be difficult to have the pieces to hand, they are somewhere around the track."

Or most likely in the bedrooms of race fans… or on Ebay!