Category: Formula 1

One of the drawbacks of being an F1 driver is the constant demand for feeding the media machine. I’m sure the last thing Mark Webber wanted to on Sunday night was talk about the events of that race earlier in the day. But that’s what he did and the video from the Red Bull website can be seen after the jump.

As well as the video Webber has also filed a report for his regular column in the Daily Telegraph. Webber is keen to sort things out with Vettel and move on, “Seb and I will sit down and have a chat about it because we need to avoid costly slip-ups like this in the future. We’ll probably have a difference of opinion about what happened on Sunday until we go to our graves, but we’re both adults and we need to find a way of racing together that doesn’t compromise the team.

“If we’d been fighting for 18th and 19th positions when this accident occurred, no one would have cared; as it was, we were fighting for the lead and it’s all anyone wants to know about.”

Also posted to the Red Bull website is a new Q&A article with Christian Horner. It’s pretty much the cleared propaganda version of events. A situation perfectly highlighted by this response to a question asking why Webber was blamed for the crash, “Ultimately we win as a team and we lose as a team and on Sunday we lost as a team, as a result of our two drivers having an incident. Having looked at all the information it’s clear that it was a racing accident that shouldn’t have happened between two team-mates. After looking at all the facts that weren’t available immediately after the race, Dr. Marko also fully shares this view.”

Talk about saying a lot without actually saying anything. Included after the video below is an open letter from Mr Horner.

One thing is clear, Webber has generally handled himself with dignity in the aftermath of the Turkish Grand Prix. For his sake, let’s hope a good result in Canada will have the F1 world talking about the good things he and the Red Bull Racing team can achieve.

Before the events of the Turkish Grand Prix you could be excused for thinking life at Red Bull Racing was akin to a motoring paradise. The RB6 has granted the team pole position in all of the seven races to date. In all of those races, for the most part, the team has had a winning opportunity. Either reliability or pit wall strategy has cost them the ultimate prize in fifty per cent of the results achieved. Until now.

As you can see from this image captured during yesterday’s Turkish Grand Prix the two Red Bull Racing drivers collided. And for Vettel, on the right, that meant instant retirement from the race. Webber quickly went to the pits for a new nose cone and some new tyres and was able to continue to racing. He finished third behind the McLarens of Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button. The 15 points earned by Webber takes him to a total of 93 and gives him an outright lead in the title race.

So what went wrong? Were there any issues in the build up to this unnecessary accident, or was it simply a “racing incident”?

Mark Webber has qualified on pole position for the third successive Grand Prix at Istanbul. Webber’s time of 1:26.295 was 0.138 seconds faster than the McLaren of Lewis Hamilton and 0.465 seconds quicker than his Red Bull Racing teammate Sebastien Vettel.

This weekend hasn’t been easy going for Webber who suffered an engine failure late in yesterday’s final practice session. Speaking at the post-qualifying press conference Webber said, “Obviously Friday was a little bit disrupted, but not massively so, to be honest. This morning, also, we were not having the easiest P3.

“Getting ready for quali things started to get a little bit better. I was a little bit on the back foot going in. But I knew I could dig deep, keep going and get something out of it. In the end it turned out okay.”

Of the previous five Grands Prix held at Istanbul Park the pole sitter has won four times. Ominously for his rivals Webber expects his car to show better race pace than it did during qualifying, “I’m more comfortable with tomorrow than I am with out and out pace. So, I’m starting in the right place.

“We’ve got, potentially, one of the more interesting races tomorrow. We’re optimistic we can get a good result from there, for sure.”