Kovalainen to the hospital as team is convinced he'll race at Turkey

Heikki Kovalainen was taken to the hospital for a complete check-up after his high-speed crash during the Spanish Grand Prix. At the scene, doctors attended to Kovalainen and as he was put on a stretcher, the Finn gave a thumbs-up to the crowd. The McLaren driver was taken to the medical centre, before being transported by helicopter to a Barcelona hospital.

The FIA said in a statement that Kovalainen seemed to be uninjured: "He is stable with no visible injuries. He will be taken to hospital for further precautionary checks."

Martin Whitmarsh is convinced that Heikki will get the all clear to race after the precautionary checks in the hospital. The McLaren CEO declared to 'ITV': "There are no visible injuries, but he has obviously banged his head and as a precaution he is now being flown to hospital and they will just check on the concussion.

"He was complaining that he hit his elbow, but I think that is quite normal. There are no signs of serious injury, so that's good news. And I am sure that once they have checked him out, he will be back fit and well very soon."

Whitmarsh expects that Heikki will be able to race during the Turkish GP in two weeks time: "I'm not a doctor but all the signs are that he will be fine by the time we get to Turkey."

On what caused the crash, Whitmarsh said: "Obviously we don't have a lot of data on the issues, but we can detect from the data that we had a sudden deflation of tyre pressure, we don't believe it was a tyre failure. There was evidence of part of the rim becoming detached. It wasn't a classic structural failure. Potentially a bit of debris, a stone or maybe part of the car got inside the rim, which caught it, machined it and the rim failed, which then caused that sudden deflation."