MOTORSPORT: Yeah, yeah, yeah Webber! You beauty!

Webber could have lost his voice box trying to explain to his critics, detractors and doubters why it hadn't happened in his previous 131 GPs, but his driving at the Nurburgring did all the talking that mattered.

He qualified his Red Bull RB5 on pole position in tricky conditions, outpacing not only his wonderboy teammate Sebastian Vettel on his home ground but the BrawnGP cars that have been dominant most of the season and had less fuel in them and were therefore lighter, got swamped off the start line by Lewis Hamilton's McLaren charging from the third row, squeezed and biffed Rubens Barrichello's Brawn, copped a drive-through penalty for that but drove faultlessly thereafter to finally take the chequered flag first.

In the end it was what Webber called "a very straightforward, easy victory". But how sweet and memorable it was. And deserved after so many difficulties over more than a decade of trying -- seven-and-a-half years of that in F1 -- to achieve just this.

The delight exploded out of Webber in the cockpit and still under his helmet in audio that will be played forever.

Yet interviewed just minutes later he was remarkably contained, not even singling out his partner Ann Neal or father Alan (or perhaps Paul Stoddart, who gave him a start when he owned Minardi) for the parts they have played in getting him to this point -- this peak in motorsport's highest mountain.

He did thank, generally, everyone in Australia who had supported him along the journey and, while he could have served it up to those who have made fun of him in the worst moments (almost always due to mechanical failures) of his long and hard road, he let a "hello" to the doubters suffice. (While this author has been an avid supporter of Webber he admittedly rated him a lesser chance of victory ahead of the Nurburgring weekend than either of the Brawn drivers or Vettel).

That dignity and modesty in the press conference said a lot about Webber. A very decent bloke in a big pool of sharks (not so much the drivers but many of the others who populate the F1 paddock).

A transcript of the post-race press conference, including questions and answers not seen and heard on the telecast, is here. And for an update of the great F1 feud between the governing Federation Internationale de l'Automobile, or FIA, and the teams association FOTA and its related car manufacturers, see the 'F1 row nears endgame' report by Andrew Benson for the BBC website, here.

Four times Webber had started from the front row before, but never from the pole. So this was the first pole and first GP win by an Australian in almost three decades -- since the days of Alan Jones.

After the trail blazed by our great Sir Jack Brabham, who is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first of his three F1 world titles this year, Webber is still only the third Aussie to have stood on the top step of a GP podium. He's in very elite company now.

Now when we see him mingling with other Aussie sporting stars like Ricky Ponting and Leyton Hewitt we will view him as an achiever, indeed a winner, rather than the often-tragic struggler.

In the excitement of this victory many, especially Australians, are wondering whether Webber can now be world champion. It's a beautiful thought, but not this year, we reckon.

Webber's teammate Vettel, on 47 points, is still 21 behind Brawn's Jenson Button with seven races remaining.

Webber is 22.5 points behind Button, so it's very much an uphill battle to win that crown. This year. But after two 1-2 finishes on the trot Red Bull clearly is the pacesetting team now.

Button and Barrichello were still fifth and sixth in Germany -- behind the Williams-Toyota of Nico Rosberg, who had started 15th -- and those kinds of results are going to make it a long time before Webber or Vettel can clamber to the top of the table.

The emotional Barrichello, who has suddenly dropped from second to fourth in the championship, called his Nurburgring GP "a good show from the team on how to lose a race".

"They made me lose the race. To be very honest, I wish I could get on the plane and go home (to Brazil)," Barrichello said. "I don't want to talk to anyone in the team. It will be all 'blah, blah, blah' and I don't want to hear that."

But team principal Ross Brawn pointed out that Barrichello's set-up had only allowed him to set the 11th fastest lap of the race and that he was never going to win in a car like that.

It was the first time this year that Brawn -- the new incarnation of Honda's F1 operation -- had not been represented on the podium, but Button said: "The Red Bulls are quick, they've made improvements, but I don't think it (the speed advantage) is as big as it looks at the moment."

There were signs of improvement from traditional heavyweights McLaren and Ferrari, the only two teams still using the controversial KERS (Kinetic Energy Recovery System).

McLaren's improvement was seen most in practice and qualifying, while Hamilton's KERS-aided start saw him blast to the front, only to puncture a tyre and run wide at the first turn.

Ferrari's advance was more convincing, with the gutsy Felipe Massa on the podium for the first time this season, while his 2007 world champion teammate Kimi Raikkonen again wrecked Adrian Sutil's chances of an excellent finish for lowly Force India after the young German had qualified a brilliant seventh.

Speculation is rife that Renault's dual world champion Fernando Alonso will be announced in early September as a Ferrari driver for five years on a US$175 million contract.

As much as we would love to see Alonso in a Ferrari we think that speculation is far-fetched, with Raikkonen and Massa still contracted until the end of next year.

Meanwhile, four-time Champ Car champion Sebastian Bourdais' days with Red Bull's sister team Toro Rosso appear numbered. In the box seat to replace Bourdais is Spanish teenager Jaime Alguersuari, who would become the sport's youngest driver.

Alguersuari comes with sponsorship from Spanish oil giant Repsol as well as Red Bull and won last year's British Formula 3 Championship with Carlin Motorsport.

The significance for Australian fans is that Perth's 20-year-old Daniel Ricciardo is in that Carlin seat now, is leading this year's British F3 series and is another of the eight youngsters in Red Bull's junior development program.

Ricciardo is still a long way from an F1 race drive, but the prospect and goal are there.

French sports newspaper l'Equipe has linked five-time world rally champion Sebestien Loeb to Bourdais' Toro Rosso set, but Citroen has made it clear there is no way Loeb will be released mid-season, especially now that he is in a tight tussle with Ford's Finnish ace Mikko Hirvonen for this year's WRC with just four rounds to go -- including the new Rally Australia in NSW's Northern Rivers region on the first weekend of September.

Incidentally, Australia's multiple national rally champion Cody Crocker is well on the way to another Asia-Pacific title after winning Rally Hokkaido in Japan at the weekend in his Singapore-prepared Subaru.

And Aussies Ryan Briscoe and Will Power were second and third at the latest IndyCar round in Toronto, Canada.

Briscoe's runner-up finish was his fifth in the past six races. He and Power both had flat tyres on their Penske cars on the opening lap in Toronto and had to pit for changes.

Dario Franchitti won the race and went to the top of the points table, ahead of his Ganassi teammate New Zealander Scott Dixon.

Also in North America, 50-year-old Mark Martin won the latest round of NASCAR's Sprint Cup at Chicagoland Speedway. It was the fourth victory this season for the long-time Ford driver now racing a Chevrolet for Hendrick Motorsports.

That's more wins than any NASCAR driver this year and Martin led 195 laps and held off teammate Jeff Gordon, who was followed by Kasey Kahne (Dodge), series leader Tony Stewart (Chevrolet) and Danny Hamlin (Toyota), with Australia's Marcos Ambrose (Toyota) 11th.

Kahne jumped four spots to eighth in the championship, while ex-F1 racer Juan Pablo Montoya is now ninth, Kyle Busch has slipped to 10th and Matt Kenseth to 12th, while Ambrose is 18th.

The next Sprint Cup round is the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis in a fortnight.

We've left the new Townsville 400 until last, only because it was more visible to Australian fans than everything else we've mentioned already.

We predicted here beforehand that the winners would come from either Triple 8 Race Engineering/Team Vodafone or Holden Racing Team, and were pretty near right -- Jamie Whincup notched his seventh victory in the season's 11th race on Saturday and Sunday's overdue victory by James Courtney was in a Ford Falcon built by Triple 8 but with an engine prepared by the Dick Johnson/Jim Beam racing's own engine team.

So two more wins for Falcons -- but again not Falcons supported by the Ford factory! The only driver of a factory-supported Ford in the top 10 in the drivers' championship is Mark Winterbottom in seventh.

While HRT is clearly the best of the Holden teams, the General's chiefs at Fishermans Bend are entitled to wonder -- indeed ask -- when consistent wins are going to come again.

A three-day crowd of 168,057 was announced for the Townsville event. Certainly it proved a huge drawcard for people in North Queensland, although one report calling it "a new wonder ... to rival the Great Barrier Reef, the Daintree Rainforest and the beautiful Tableland" was over the top.

We enjoyed the telecast and the show generally. When time allows we'll try to revisit the weekend's outcome -- especially the TV figures in comparison with other rounds.

Certainly the event was a big success and we noted quite a lot of what might be called tourism promotion of Townsville before the races, although the governments and city council that stumped up so many millions of dollars surely could have been given much greater value in track signage. That's something that only Adelaide has ever seemed to get right.

And for something amusing from across the Tasman, see here.

Formula 1 Drivers' World Championship standings -- Jenson Button (Great Britain, Brawn-Mercedes) 68 points, Sebastian Vettel (Germany, Red Bull-Renault) 47, Mark Webber (Australia, Red Bull-Renault) 45.5, Rubens Barrichello (Brazil, Brawn-Mercedes) 44, Felipe Massa (Brazil, Ferrari) 22, Jarno Trulli (Italy, Toyota) 21.5, Nico Rosberg (Germany, Williams-Toyota) 20.5, Timo Glock (Germany, Toyota) 13, 9. Fernando Alonso (Spain, Renault) 13, Kimi Raikkonen (Finland, Ferrari) 10, Lewis Hamilton (Great Britain, McLaren-Mercedes) 9, Nick Heidfeld (Germany, BMW Sauber) 6, Heikki Kovalainen (Finland, McLaren-Mercedes) 5, Sebastien Buemi (Switzerland, Toro Rosso-Ferrari) 3, Robert Kubica (Poland, BMW-Sauber) 2, Sebastien Bourdais (France, Toro Rosso-Ferrari) 2.

F1 Constructors' World Championship standings -- Brawn-Mercedes 112 points, Red Bull-Renault 92.5, Toyota 34.5, Ferrari 32, Williams-Toyota 20.5, McLaren-Mercedes 14, Renault 13, BMW-Sauber 8, Toro Rosso-Ferrari 5, Force India-Mercedes.

Indy Racing League standings -- Dario Franchitti (Ganassi) 347 points, Scott Dixon (Ganassi) 345, Ryan Briscoe (Penske) 334, Helio Castroneves (Penske) 269, Danica Patrick (Andretti Green) 266.

NASCAR Sprint Cup standings after 19 of 36 races -- Tony Stewart (Chevrolet) 2884 points, Jeff Gordon (Chevrolet) 2709, Jimmie Johnson (Chevrolet) 2672, Kurt Busch (Dodge) 2526, Denny Hamlin (Toyota) 2457, Carl Edwards (Ford) 2438, Ryan Newman (Chevrolet) 2385, Kasey Kahne (Dodge) 2336, Juan Montoya (Chevrolet) 2321, Kyle Busch (Toyota) 2298, Mark Martin (Chevrolet) 2296, Matt Kensett (Ford) 2295.  Australian Marcos Ambrose (Toyota) is 18th on 2078 points.

V8 Supercar Championship standings after 12 of 26 races -- Jamie Whincup (Ford) 1560 points, Will Davison (Holden) 1386, Garth Tander (H) 1212, Craig Lowndes (F) 1110, Steven Johnson (F) 1050, Lee Holdsworth (H) 993, Mark Winterbottom (F) 957, Rick Kelly (H) 903, Russell Ingall (H) 830, Michael Caruso (H) 828.

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