MOTORSPORT: Webber cool now about that crash

Let's get on with it, says Australia's GP star
Red Bull's slogan is "Gives You Wings" but it took on a whole new meaning for Mark Webber in the European Grand Prix -- thankfully without injury or worse consequences.

While he walked away from the horror crash at Valencia, Webber's world championship quest is now in serious trouble -- although there are 10 races left.

He's dropped to fourth in the standings, trailing leader Lewis Hamilton by 24 points -- just one less than a race win is worth.

In the most competitive F1 world championship in ages, if not all time, it could take three, four or five races to overcome that deficit -- if it can be done at all.

Apart from Hamilton and his McLaren teammate Jenson Button, the other driver now ahead of Webber is his own teammate, Sebastian Vettel, who won at Valencia from the pole position he took narrowly ahead of Webber.

The nine GPs so far this season have seen the four top drivers win twice each, while Ferrari's Fernando Alonso was the other victor -- at the first race in Bahrain -- but has now dropped to fifth in the championship.

Alonso and Ferrari felt he was treated harshly in Valencia by officialdom.

More of that later, but the positive for Webber is that Red Bull may be even quicker at the next two GPs -- at Silverstone in Britain and Hockenheim in Germany -- than they were in Valencia, where they surprised by filling the front row.

However, Webber lost his second place at the first corner and -- after racing three wide with Button and Renault's Robert Kubica on that opening lap -- was back in ninth by the second lap.

He had pitted for a tyre change before the 10th lap collision with the Lotus of Heikki Kovalainen that saw the Red Bull RB6 take off, flip over, land upside down, bounce back on to its remaining wheels, slam into a tyre barrier and come to a half with the wreck pointing back towards the oncoming traffic -- albeit well out of harm's way in the gravel.

It was reminiscent of the two crashes Webber had at Le Mans in a Mercedes sportscar 11 years ago, although he didn't go over a fence this time and there weren't trees awaiting him.

But Webber said: "I was worried about any bridges or things that I could hit in the air. I knew I was a long way up."

Webber has been remarkably gentle in his comments since the crash about Kovalainen, whose Lotus was three seconds a lap slower than the Red Bull and who had nothing to gain by holding up the Aussie.

It would have been only a matter of time, probably only seconds, before Webber would have got by the Finn.

Webber said Kovalainen gave confusing signals and then braked a long way before he had expected.

However, Lotus technical director Mike Gascoyne said Webber was to blame.

"It's the responsibility of the guy behind to make the overtaking manoeuvre safely. He blatantly didn't," Gascoyne said.

But here's how Webber explained the incident to the BBC: "Well, it always takes two to tango, doesn't it? There's two of us in this incident.

"I've driven slow cars -- I've been at the back -- and obviously when someone comes up with those kind of closing distances to be down the inside, bouncing off the limiter and carrying on like it is going to ...

"I mean how long is that (staying ahead) going to last for? It's going to last another 15 seconds, so is it worth it?

"I was looking for the best tow to get the job done and pass him and he was playing quite hard as well down the inside, blocking all of a sudden very aggressively.

"In the end the thing that surprised me was how early he braked -- that's the thing which caught me out.

"It didn't matter where I was or how close to the tow, I still had everything under control.

"It was a nasty incident. Clearly I was surprised by what was happening on the run down to that corner.

"To start with I thought, 'OK, he's releasing me' -- letting me go -- because obviously the pace difference is massive and then he started closing the door and he's having these small movements and I thought, 'where's he going?'

"Yeah, he braked, or lifted or whatever, and it turns out it's about 80 metres before I braked for the previous lap, so I mean it's a different category to what had happened the previous few laps."

The RB6 wrecked was the one Webber drove to victory in Monaco and Barcelona and multiple pole positions.

"So the chassis has been good to me," Webber said. "I remain incredibly positive, we go on, it's half way through the championship.

"Let's get on with it."

Vettel's victory at a street circuit where he said Red Bull "didn't expect to be that strong" may be ominous for other teams, although McLaren followed up its successive one-two finishes in Turkey and Canada with second and third at Valencia.

Hamilton has now finished second there three years in a row -- this time after a drive-through penalty for overtaking the safety car but without losing position.

That enraged Hamilton's arch foe Alonso and his Ferrari team.

"I was in third place, a metre behind Hamilton at the moment the safety car came out on track and, at the chequered flag, he was second and I was ninth, even though we had made the same choice of strategy," said Alonso, who was promoted one position when officials penalised several drivers five seconds post-race.

"Unfortunately everything goes against us and it seems they (officials) are allowing everything."

Ferrari issued a statement saying: "A scandal, that's the opinion of so many fans and employees who are all in agreement: there is no other way to describe what happened.

"The way the race and the incidents during it were managed raise doubts that could see F1 lose some credibility again, as it was seen around the world."

The Williams team has now gone 100 GPs since its last win.

However, Valencia was its best race this season, with Rubens Barrichello and Nico Hulkenberg both qualifying in the top 10 -- while both Mercedes, driven by Michael Schumacher and Nico Rosberg -- missed out on making it to the third stanza of qualifying.

And Barrichello, winner at Valencia last year, finished fourth this time.

The man he partnered at Ferrari for so long, Schumacher, finished 15th after being forced to wait at the pit lane exit for a red light to go green while the safety car was deployed.

It was the worst finish of Schumacher's 259-GP career and even harder to stomach after he had run as high as third at one point.

Mercedes motorsport chief Norbert Haug said. "Michael could have finished quite high if the red light at the pit exit had not been switched on."

But the man of the race was Sauber's Kamui Kobayashi, who drove all but the last four laps on a single set of tyres, lapping in third place before his late pitstop.

Then he passed Alonso on the last lap and Toro Rosso's Sebastien Buemi at the final corner.

Team boss Peter Sauber called Kobayashi's performance "absolutely amazing".

Formula One drivers' world championship standings after nine of 19 rounds -- Lewis Hamilton (Great Britain, McLaren-Mercedes) 127 points, Jenson Button (GB, McLaren-Mercedes) 121, Sebastian Vettel (Germany, Red Bull Racing-Renault) 115, Mark Webber (Australia, Red Bull Racing-Renault) 103, Fernando Alonso (Spain, Ferrari) 98, Robert Kubica (Poland, Renault) 83, Nico Rosberg (Germany, Mercedes) 75, Felipe Massa (Brazil, Ferrari) 67, Michael Schumacher (Germany, Mercedes) 34, Adrain Sutil (Germany, Force India-Mercedes) 31, Rubens Barrichello (Brazil, Williams-Cosworth) 19, Vitantonio Liuzzi (Italy, Force India-Mercedes) 12, Sebastien Buemi (Switzerland, Toro Rosso-Ferrari) 9, Kamui Kobayashi (Japan, Sauber-Ferrari) 7, Vitaly Petrov (Russia, Renault) 6, Jaime Alguersuari (Spain, Toro Rosso-Ferrari) 3, Nico Hulkenberg (Germany, Williams-Cosworth) 1.

F1 constructors' world championship standings -- McLaren-Mercedes 248 points, Red Bull-Renault 218, Ferrari 165, Mercedes 109, Renault 89, Force India-Mercedes 43, Williams-Cosworth 20,Toro Rosso-Ferrari 10, Sauber-Ferrari 7.

>> NASCAR's champion of the past four years, Jimmie Johnson, claimed his fifth Sprint Cup Series victory of the season -- and his second straight -- at New Hampshire Motor Speedway today.
It was a much better round for Australian Marcos Ambrose -- he was 13th after the bungle that gifted Johnson last week's victory at Sonoma, California.

>> The works Proton Satria Neos of Australia's Chris Atkinson and his Perth-based Scottish teammate Alister McRae dropped out of the Geko Ypres Rally -- a round of the Intercontinental Rally Challenge -- on just the fourth stage with identical valve spring failures.

 "Naturally we're disappointed, but we're trying to improve all of the time," Atkinson said. "We're going up against teams that have been racing their cars for three or four years.

"We'll take it step by step, but we're looking at a longer term view and hopefully we will keep improving."

Belgian Freddy Loix, driving a Skoda for the first time, won the Geko Ypres Rally for the sixth time victory to become the fifth different winner of an IRC round this season.

Finn Juho Hanninen, the series leader, crashed into retirement on Friday night.

Atkinson and the Proton team will contest the next IRC round -- the Sata Rally Açores in Portugal on July 15-17 -- before the International Rally of Queensland on the Sunshine Coast on July 31–August 1.

That event is a round of the Asia-Pacific and Australian championships.

Simon and Sue Evans won their fourth straight Rally South Australia at the weekend, taking out both heats in their Subaru Impreza WRX.

Their main rival, Scott Pedder was airlifted to hospital with leg injuries after his Mitsubishi Lancer Evo IX hit a tree on the opening stage of Sunday's stages.

Pedder was reported to be in a stable condition, while his co-driver Jon Mortimer was not hurt.

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