MOTORSPORT: Webber not getting enough points

That wasn’t Webber’s fault – his Red Bull team has acknowledged it gave him a top gear too short for much passing – but he has dropped from second to third in the championship.

Points for the second time this season for Australia’s other F1 driver, Daniel Ricciardo. The Perth youngster was as high as fourth in his Toro Rosso early in the race but finished one place behind French teammate, Jean-Eric Vergne.

Jenson Button won the race at Spa-Francorchamps with a consummate drive, but the big winner from the weekend was Sebastian Vettel, who started tenth, had a terrible start yet wound up second. In the process he leapfrogged teammate Webber into second place in the championship with eight races left.

Third was Kimi Raikkonen for Lotus, his sixth podium of the year, and he is now just one point behind Webber, despite not having won a race while Webber has had two victories.

Another winner from the weekend was F1 safety, with nobody seriously hurt in the first-corner mayhem triggered by Frenchman Romain Grosjean. The serious error of judgment in nudging Lewis Hamilton’s McLaren eliminated the pair, Alonso and Sauber’s Mexican Sergio Perez.

There were a few nervous seconds with Alonso not moving in his cockpit. He had trouble breathing as foam extinguished a small fire but he emerged with what seems to be only a sore left shoulder and whiplash after feeling “as though I had been run into by a train”.

German youngster Nico Hulkenberg’s fourth place for the Force India team further enhanced his rapidly-rising credentials to replace Felipe Massa at Ferrari. Brazilian Massa’s form was better at Spa but he finished fifth, behind “The Hulk”.

Elsewhere, American Ryan Hunter-Reay won today’s IndyCar race on the streets of Baltimore to narrow Australian Will Power’s series lead to 17 points with just the final round remaining at California’s Speedway on September 15.

Power finished sixth at Baltimore after a wrong call on wet tyres, while fellow Aussie and teammate Ryan Briscoe was second – and he and the Penske team were unhappy at Hunter-Reay’s lightning restart towards the end of the race as Briscoe led.

Power averages only 13th in oval races but has vowed to do everything he can to take the Indy title after narrowly missing out the past two years.

NASCAR’s 25th race of the Sprint Cup at Atlanta today had a late finish, with Marcos Ambrose finishing 17th.

New Zealand’s first V8 SuperTourer endurance event at Taupo was won by Kiwi Scott McLaughlin with Aussie Jonathon Webb. They took the overall victory ahead of the weekend’s first-heat winners, Aussie Jack Perkins and Kiwi youngster Nick Cassidy – both pairings in Holdens. Third were John McIntyre and Jono Lester in a Ford, although all the cars run a generic Corvette-based engine.

“We had a bit of luck at the start, but after that we didn’t get the most out of the situation – but it was good to finish six places higher than I started and get points,” Webber said.

But he has only scored 16 points in the past three races – from eighth places in Germany and Hungary and this sixth in Belgium – and is still 32 behind Alonso in the championship and now eight behind Vettel, whose aggressive driving and one-stop strategy got him the most he could have hoped for out of Spa.

“To go from tenth [on the grid] to second was a great recovery… His overtaking was excellent,” Red Bull team principal Christian Horner said of Vettel.

“With Mark, our selection of top gear… penalised him a bit when he was overtaking at the top of the hill. In clean air he would have been very quick, but he was in traffic for most of the race.”

Ricciardo, who had been without a championship point since the Melbourne season-opener, called the Spa race “good fun” and said he “can’t complain” about his second ninth place of the year.

“We benefitted from the incident immediately after the start, when I had got a good run off the line,” Ricciardo said.

“Then I moved right to the inside going through the hairpin and came out sixth. My first stint was on the medium tyre and I ran as high as fourth at one point. However, I was not quite as quick in my last two stints, which were on the prime [tyre], so I dropped a couple of positions.

“You always want to do better, you always want more, but you can’t complain with ninth, being back in the points for the first time since Melbourne. Hopefully, it will give us some momentum for the team’s home GP next week [at Italy’s Monza].”

Toro Rosso had lost ground on other midfield teams since the Malaysian GP, the second race of the season where Vergne finished eighth, and team principal Franz Tost said after Spa: “In this the first race after the [northern] summer break we have scored as many points as we did in the whole first half of the season!

“We benefited from the misfortune of others, with the crash at the first corner after the start, because Ricciardo and Vergne completed the opening lap in sixth and seventh places, from 16th and 15th respectively on the grid.

“From then, both drivers did a good job to build on that, pulling off some decisive overtaking manoeuvres and our pit stops were also pretty good.

“The whole team performed well and this return to the points with both cars is a much-needed boost for all the backroom staff. Now I hope we can continue in this way,” the young Aussie said.

Button’s win - his first since Melbourne, and after a string of six races from mid-April to mid-July in which he scored only seven points – was the 14th of the 2009 world champion’s career, his first at Spa, and came after his first pole position for McLaren in his 50th race with the team. However, he is still 16 points behind teammate Hamilton – in strife with McLaren for tweeting team telemetry - and 63 behind Alonso.

Spaniard Alonso was thankful for the safety of modern F1 cars, especially with a car flying so close to his helmet, and said he had simply been “in the wrong place at the wrong time” in the crash that denied him the opportunity of a record-equalling 24th consecutive points finish.

After the rain-interrupted lead-in to the race he had started sixth, with none of the drivers ahead of him in the top five in the championship.

Alonso said he was not angry with Grosjean but that “certain drivers should try and take fewer risks at the start” – probably a reference particularly to Venezuelan Pastor Maldonado, who jumped the start in his Williams from fifth on the grid.

Maldonado has been given a 10-place grid penalty for Monza for that and contact with Timo Glock’s Marussia car five laps later.

Grosjean, apologetic for his action approaching the first corner and just glad nobody was seriously injured in the subsequent carnage, has been suspended from the Italian GP and given a hefty fine.

The Lotus team’s reserve driver, Belgian Jerome D’Ambrosio, formerly a Marussia race driver, is the likely substitute.

Michael Schumacher’s 300th GP ended with seventh place for Mercedes, ahead of the Toro Rossos even after a late tyre change, but he had been as high as second early in the race.

 Hulkenberg’s fourth for Mercedes-engined Force India was that team’s best finish.

Read the latest news and reviews on your mobile, iPhone or PDA at carsales' mobile site…