Despite Red Rags best efforts to shoot itself in the hoof once again Mark Webber overcame not just his team-mate, but his team as well to dominate the British Grand Prix at Silverstone. Webber led from start to finish to win from a determined Hoon and the Unter-Ubermensch’s uber team-mate, Nico Rosberg.

Webber celebrates after his dominating victory

   The storm clouds began gathering on Saturday morning when Vettel’s nose cone collapsed during free practice. Red Rag were trying out some new front wing configurations and the damaged one on Vettel’s car was just one of two available. To Webber’s fury, and the outrage of the sporting press and fans world-wide, team manager Christian Horner took the new wing off Webber’s car and gave it to Vettel for qualifying and the race.

  Horner’s justification for this is that as Vettel was the higher placed driver in the championship he should have the best equipment. This would have been acceptable if he was leading Webber by more than just a few points and had been demonstrably the quicker of the two drivers up till this point in the season. Unfortunately the stats don’t reflect this and the only reason that Vettel was ahead of Webber in the championship was his abysmal effort in taking Webber out of the lead in Turkey.

  What the rest of the world saw was yet another display of the managements (for wont of a better description) bias towards Vettel over his older team-mate. It is said that Helmut Marko, Red Rag’s overall motor-sport manager, sees the youthful Vettel as a better marketing tool than Webber and therefore forces the team to give the German preference. And of course, the team’s only reason for existence, is as a marketing tool for a soft drink.

  It is odd then that Marko doesn’t understand just what bad publicity this apparent bias is causing and just how many people are likely to never consume said soft drink again. And don’t think this is just an Australian based rant. There has been condemnation from all over the world hitting the Red Bull website. Even Germans are calling for this to end. Former F1 and sportscar driver, and now head of VW/Audi motor-sport, Hans Stuck has called for Marko to be sacked and replaced by Toro Rosso boss Franz Tost. "Christian Horner is just a puppet, the strings for Red Bull boss Dietrich Mateschitz are pulled solely by Marko,and whoever decided to take the new wing away from Webber qualified for his final pension. Mateschitz must respond by putting in a new man at Red Bull," he said, recommending the current team boss of Red Bull's second Formula One team for the job. "Tost is in every respect one of the best managers in Formula One," said Stuck.

  Another former F1 driver Jos (The Boss) Verstappen (also know as the frying Dutchman after his 1994 Hockenhiem blaze) had a blunter suggestion. "I honestly don't know how I would have reacted in Webber's shoes. I probably would have trodden on the wing; if I'm not allowed to use it, then neither can he,"

  Stuck’s comments are a bit harsh on Horner as he and Mark have had a good relationship for quite a while and Horner probably believed that he was doing the right thing. One of the requirements of being a good manager though, is communicating your decisions so that you don’t piss off your employees. Horner admitted that he had not done a particularly good job of this in this instance. Things have reached such a divisive state within the team that Webber’s crew were seen to be taunting Vettel’s crew with Mark’s front wing after the race.

  Mean-while there was a race, and not a bad one at that. Vettel consigned himself to a bit part player with a move off the grid that would have made the Unter-Ubermensch proud when he tried to squeeze Webber against the pit wall, but Mark, still in a rage from Saturday’s events was having none of it and muscled his way into a first corner lead. Vettel then tried to squeeze the Hoon and suffered a puncture for his troubles which meant a first lap pit-stop. He rejoined dead last and almost a full lap down.

  The Hoon hung on to Webber as best he could but once the Red Rags tyres were bedded in Mark simply drove steadily away from the field. The Hoon had another chance after a safety car had been deployed to remove debris from the track but Webber set his fastest lap of the race so far on the restart lap just to show how much he had in hand over the rest and he was never troubled again.

  Rosberg in the Silver Sling had another excellent race taking a calm third ahead of Button in the 2^nd McLaren. Jenson had had a shocker in qualifying and lined up only fourteenth but a gamble on a later than most tyre stop saw him jump up the field. Once Kubica had retired and Alonso had taken himself out of play when refusing to hand back a (dubiously) illegally taken place off Kubica Button only had a chasing Williams and Sauber to worry about. Despite the rise in form of Barrichello and Kobayashi in said Williams and Sauber, Button was more of a worry to Rosberg than they were to him.

  Behind that pair came Vettel, who benefited greatly from the safety car period to recover much lost ground and a few points places at the end of the race although his tyre banging move to pass Sutil impressed no-one, especially not Sutil. Sutil in turn managed to hold out the Unter-Ubermensch who had been blown to the weeds again and yet another German in Nico Hulkenberg who took the last point scoring position for Williams. Five Germans in the top ten places.

Alonso passes Kubica before that penalty

  King Fernando can probably justifiably feel a bit put upon after his penalty at Silverstone. Yes, he did complete his pass on Kubica off the circuit, but only because if he had stayed on the circuit both Kubica, who was pushing him wide, and Alonso would have been out of the race with very bent cars. Personally I thought it was a legitimate pass and the call to hand back the place was incorrect. So did Alonso. Then Kubica went out with a half shaft failure so he couldn’t hand back the place anyway. That should have been the end of it, but no, they smacked King Fernando with a drive through, which coming just after the safety car period put him at the back of the field and right out of points contention. Way too much of a penalty for such a dubious decision.

For full results go to;

 http://www.mmmsport.com.au/index.php?option=com_docman&task=cat_view&gid=150&dir=ASC&order=name&limit=5&limitstart=10

Sam Snape

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