Webber considers future after Vettel incident

EVEN catching a few waves on his surfboard in Australia might not be enough to assuage Mark Webber’s fury at Sebastian Vettel’s “stab in the back” victory at the Malaysian Grand Prix.

Three-times world champion Vettel was forced to make a grovelling apology after ignoring team orders for the Red Bull drivers to keep their positions by overtaking Webber with ten laps remaining of Sunday’s race. The 36-year-old Australian, who finished second in a Red Bull 1-2, made his displeasure absolutely clear on the podium and said he would consider his position during a spell of rest and recuperation on the Queensland coast.

The incident laid bare once more the issue of his place at the team he has raced for since 2007, alongside Vettel since 2009.

Webber has always maintained that he should be his German team-mate’s equal in the race for the world title but often suspected that was not the case. “They know that I need 100 per cent support,” he said last month. “You cannot fight for world championships with 90. You need 100... we’re going into 2013 with this in place and I’m comfortable with that.”

At that same event in Milton Keynes, team principal Christian Horner offered public reassurance that would be the case. “For us it doesn’t matter which driver wins so long as it’s a driver in one of these cars,” he said. “As a team we will do the very best we can to support both drivers.”

Sunday’s incident clearly gave Webber plenty of food for thought. “There were a lot of things going through my head in those closing laps,” he said. “Not just from today, but from the past as well.”

Among the “things” Webber might have been thinking about were the incident at the Turkish Grand Prix in 2010 when he and Vettel collided, knocking the German out of the race and denying the Australian, who was leading, the victory.

He might also have been thinking about that same year when he won the British Grand Prix despite having had the new front wing of his car handed to Vettel and commented “Not bad for a No 2 driver” over the team radio.

He might even have been thinking about Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko’s decision to say in an interview with Red Bull’s own magazine this year that while Webber could win races, he struggled to handle the pressures of a championship challenge. Horner is past master at smoothing these matters over, in public at least, but Webber’s comment about Vettel at Sepang was instructive.

“Seb made his own decisions and will have protection as usual,” he said.

Webber, who turned down an offer from Ferrari to stay with the team on a one-year deal, has plenty of time to think about his future at Red Bull and perhaps even in Formula 1 with the third race of the season in Shanghai not until 14 April.

“This time tomorrow I’ll be catching a few waves on my surfboard and reflecting on everything that’s happened,” he said. “I hope the weather’s good.”

Vettel’s win revived an age-old debate about team orders in Formula 1 but trust, or the lack of it, could be more of a headache for Red Bull in the weeks ahead. “If you get a situation where there’s no trust between the drivers within a team, that is quite corrosive,” said Britain’s 1996 champion, Damon Hill.

Formula 1’s past is littered with examples of teams riven by internal feuding, with drivers taking matters into their own hands on the track in dramatic and sometimes catastrophic fashion. Admirers of the late and great Gilles Villeneuve will always blame Frenchman Didier Pironi for contributing to his death by “stealing” a victory from the Canadian at the 1982 San Marino Grand Prix.

Villeneuve was incensed by Pironi overtaking him while the Canadian, leading a Ferrari one-two, slowed to manage fuel and tyres. He never spoke to Pironi again, declaring “From now on, it’s war”. Two weeks later, in Belgium, the father of 1997 champion Jacques died in qualifying at Zolder as he tried to beat his team-mate’s time.

The headline-grabbing animosity between champions Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna at McLaren in the late 1980s, which was thrilling for fans, engendered some superlative battles but also rash and reckless moves.Bad blood between Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso at McLaren in 2007 led to the Spaniard impeding his team-mate in qualifying and picking up a grid penalty that cost him pole. Without the sanction, McLaren would have swept the front row. Both men lost out on the title by one point to Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen.

What Vettel did at Sepang on Sunday, in ignoring an order to go easy on the tyres and save fuel, was more than a betrayal of a team-mate who had done as he was told and turned down the car’s engine.

It was a cold breach of sporting etiquette and fair play, a code of conduct epitomised by the selfless actions of the great Stirling Moss in the 1950s, and a failure to put the interests of the team first by risking a collision.