In the modern day world of Formula One, where team orders are now legal, its clear to everyone the role that Mark Webber will take for the remainder of the season.
Felipe Massa has made a career of supporting his team-mate at Ferrari and Mark Webber finds himself in that position this season for Red Bull.
To maximise the points for Vettel, Webber needs to finish each race ahead of Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso. If the Australian does that, then Vettel is most likely set to take his third straight drivers crown.
The first stage of that plan was qualifying and with Red Bull locking out the front row for the third successive race coupled by McLaren taking the second row, Fernando Alonso was lagging behind down in fifth place.
?It was great for us today. We put in a lot of effort to make sure we had a great car to get as high up the grid as possible. It was very, very close with Seb and I, both of us only really had one run in Q3, Seb made a mistake on his first lap and I couldn?t get the tyre prep right for the second run, but that?s how it was. Tomorrow should be a good race, I think it will be tighter between all of us, but we should have enough. It?s a challenging track with quick chicanes and you need to be very accurate when entering the corners.? Webber told formula1.com on Saturday night.
He of course was right, the Red Bull car has looked dominant at recent races and Vettel powered away from the grid and without any problems he went on to take the race win.
For Webber though it wasn’t quite as simple, a KERS problem meant that the Australian struggled during the race.
By the time the fault was obvious to all, Webber had already lost second place to Fernando Alonso who had got past the two McLaren’s earlier in the race.
Towards the closing stages of the race it looked like Webber would lose the podium spot to Lewis Hamilton, but in the end Webber nursed his car home for third.
Webber said after the race: ?We had a KERS issue that we had to manage. It?s maybe hard for people watching to know what it affects on the car, its power on the straight obviously, but also managing brake balances and those sort of things. The guys were trying to help me get the KERS to recover and were talking with me on the radio. In addition, when you have a one-stop race, it?s always a chance you have a front-right lock up. As the fronts are very important you need to look after them which can affect the rhythm a little bit, but I tried to stay as cool as possible. Overall, I was pretty happy with how I drove; we should have finished further up the road, but it?s the way it was today.?
The 40-point haul from India leaves Red Bull on top of the drivers championship and the constructors championship. With Red Bull now 91 points clear of Ferrari.
Ind GP – Race weekend recap – Webber
