Sauber engineers robbed

"They left the track, three engineers together in a van, at around 8pm (on Saturday)," a team spokesman said.

"They had to stop at the red light and then all of a sudden five people were around the car, one with a machine gun, and they opened the door and took two rucksacks and disappeared. So nobody was injured."

McLaren's Button was the victim of an attempted armed robbery about an hour earlier but his police driver smashed his way through traffic to escape when the gunmen were seen approaching.