Australian Mark Webber Leads Red Bull 1-2
Australian Mark Webber grabbed his first Grand Prix win in Germany on Sunday (12/07) for the Red Bull team as Jenson Button finished fifth. Sebastian Vettel made it a Red Bull 1-2 at the Nurburgring with Ferrari’s Felipe Massa third and Williams’ Nico Rosberg fourth.
Rubens Barrichello, Brawn GP team-mate of championship leader Button, finished sixth for the Brackley-based team.
Button still tops the F1 leaderboard with 68 points, but Vettel and Webber are now in second and third, with Barrichello fourth.
Makes you wonder if Jense is feeling a bit under pressure at the moment despite the seemingly commanding lead he enjoys at this point.
Both Vettel and Webber and beginning to eat into Button’s lead, and presumably Horner’s stated philosophy that Red Bull will not impose team orders until one of them has built up a decisive advantage, is adding a bit of intrigue as the season enters the second half.
“The pendulum swings,” Horner pointed out. “The development steps are big ones. When people bring performance to the car it’s not a hundredth here or there, its two or three 10ths.”
Indeed, that may be the case with Mclaren, who brought an upgrade to Germany that seemed to work well, Hamilton qualified fifth - and third on fuel-corrected times.
The package of a new front wing, diffuser and engine cover made the world champion’s car about 0.8secs quicker than it was before. That was enough to put him in the battle for the podium had he not got a puncture, courtesy of an inadvertent tap by Webber, at the first corner that damaged his car.
As for Brawn, they have their own major upgrade coming for the next race, with a new diffuser, new engine cover and new wings scheduled to appear on the car.
Team boss Ross Brawn described these as “quite good steps,” whatever that means in engineer-speak, presumably the aforementioned “two or three 10ths.”.
Buttons WC lead is down to 21 points, one DNF & he could really be on the back foot.
Clearly the RB’s were the class of the field today, but was the Brawn’s drop in performance related more to the cool temps & a flawed 3 stop race plan.
It will be interesting to see if there is a difference between the two front running teams at the next race. While I think RB has improved I’m not sure that the Brawns have fallen as far as it may appear.
Your boy Marcos had kind words for Webber.
“It’s a great day for Australian motorsport,” said Ambrose.
“Mark has worked very hard to get to this day and I’m really pleased that he’s got that first Formula One win.
“After many years of hard work, things are really starting to come together for him and his team has really got that Red Bull sorted out.
“The way he had to work for that win was quite something and it probably adds to the significance of the whole occasion that he came from behind after the drive through. It was a huge drive really.
“I’ve also got to send my congratulations to all of Mark’s family, friends and supporters. Mark’s dad Alan has come to some of my NASCAR races and he’s a great guy, so I’m sure he’s quite excited about it all.
“It’s been a long time between drinks for Aussies in F1 but all going well I don’t think we’ll have to wait long for another win because Mark is really on top of his game at the moment.”