Let us pray for another Vettel mechanical failure k? *bows head*

Sad but sort of true. Mark has not, and perhaps will not, beat Seb in a fair contest this season. And thats the key difference between these two this season compared with last season - Seb has simply kicked it up a couple of notches and showing his team mate a clean pair of heels.

ah well, hope springs eternal....

Shouldn't the King be getting his royal sleep?

Aww it's just past 4am still some darkness yet me matey

Hope you don't chop my head off for saying so, but even a king needs his beauty sleep...

I think Q3 said it all...

I can't get that milk out of my mind.

Am I destined to see that mental image for the rest of my life? Nobody knows. But we do know something - Mark Webber has a career in the milking business waiting for him if he is beaten by Sebastian too badly

So he will be fine which ever way this will go Beat Sebastian, Sebastian will milk. Sebastian beats Mark, Mark will milk. Fair? I think so. I'm sure Red Bull has access to enough cows in Austria so they can arrange this.

Mark looked truly shocked after quali. He was happy with his lap and I don't think he could quite comprehend how Seb pulled those extra couple of tenths. Credit to Seb, the kid is remarkable. Interesting also that Seb changed to Mark's setup between practice and quali. Not that it is always made public, but I haven't heard of that happening much since they've been teammates. It's a bit of a kick in the balls really - giving Seb his setup and then getting beaten with it. It reminds me of a couple of times last season where Jenson changed to Rubens setup and smashed him with it.

I hope Mark pulls out a great race tomorrow.

Not those specific teams, no (although rumour has it he lost the chance at a McLaren seat a couple years back due to some things he said that Dennis didn't like).

He did, however, have both Williams and Renault after his services following his stint at Jaguar. At the time, Renault were on the up and Williams had just won the last race of the season. Mark chose Williams, because it had been his life's dream to drive for them and hopefully win races/title with them. History tells us how big a mistake that was, with Renault winning the next two titles via Alonso and Williams going into a slide back down the grid as BMW elected to go in a different direction.

As far as for this year ... Why would he want to move, even if one of those teams came after him? The Brawn's did not develop as well through the season as the RBR did, while both Ferrari and McLaren blew it with their 2009 cars and would have to start again effectively from scratch for 2010 as they needed to remove KERS. Staying at RBR looks attractive when you look at things that way.

Yep,same here,i just hope Vettel has a good start and there is no temptation for Mark otherwise Horner will be sitting in the corner for the whole race.

interestingly flavio was right both times. He told him to go to renault, and told him to go to red bull.

its only race our out of 16 - a long race to do but I do think Mark should start soon.

If only the Anti Webber/Pro Seb werent so arrogant we might have a decent convo

Bit like hoping Max and Bernie would resign - nether senarios will ever happen

I think if DC was still driving the other car webber would have a huge chance at the WDC - but vettel is just too much. Whats the stats now for qualifying over both years? Must be pretty bad.

Well nobody expected S3 outta Seb - did you see Horner's face? S1 purple okay, but S2 was slower than Mark and so it is not surprising that Mark would imagine himself to have secured pole.

See, this is the difference between the Hamilton/Button and Vettel/Webber teammate battles.

Hamilton has been outqualified by Button 3:1, but he's been faster all weekend. It's his screw-ups that have cost him and while this is hugely frustrating, Hamilton, as well as most people, still think he's is the faster of the pair.

Meanwhile at Red Bull, Webber does everything he can, nails a good lap, but still gets beaten by the goofy kid with the knapsack playing ping-pong around the paddock. It's bad when you make mistakes and your teammate is there to pick up where you left off, but to lay everything you have on the line and do a perfect job, only to have your teammate, who had been struggling all weekend blitz your absolute best time on the only pre-race lap that counts is just defeating.

Deep down, Mark knows the only way he outqualified Vettel is because he took that gamble for Inters. Even then, come race day, it didn't matter because his teammate beat him into the first corner... from 3rd on the grid!

It's situations like these where Webber has to start wondering if Vettel is just truly... better than him.

Having said that, I think Webber will pull the biggest banzai move ever on Vettel into the first corner tomorrow. I think Webber will quite literally make Hamilton's move at the start of Fuji 08 look like Crazy Lew braked early. Webber has to beat Vettel to that corner, if nothing else, for his confidence.

Did you see the way his face fell when he saw Seb's split? That was the face of a beaten man.

Hehe you are right and I had it :

Hmm I'm still waiting for Mark to pay back seb for Fuji. Maybe he is waiting to be behind seb in the rain behind a safety car lol



Sure hope so mate...

S3 purple was not so surprising out of Vettel. The more shocking news was Vettel's purple for S1.

If you have been following FP1, FP2, FP3 and Q (and I did), you would see that Vettel had the most problem and least competitive out of all front runners in S1. His FP1 S1 time was 25.771 (Hamilton 25.422), FP2 S1 time was 25.398 (Hamilton 25.050), FP3 S1 time was 25.298 (Hamilton 25.018).

Vettel only beat Hamilton's S1 time in Q3, and he did it in a convincing manner going sub-25 for the first time in China.

To be an true Mark Webber fan is to be the eternal optimist

Having a great weekend sporting teams wise - so lets hope mark can make it perfect!

Newey designed the car for Vettel this season so not really a fair fight.

now dont going saying such paranoid things

Red Bull said it themselves.

I do not think so. Both drivers were briefed that they should do nothing stupid and it would not help Markin his quest for WDC and would threaten his position in the team.

H2H

I was being faceious

Good move by Mark, but what a jump start by Alonso!

Mark got clearly the first choice in the pits.


H2H

Seb just flys past like as if no one is there

does he WANT kimi to have his seat or somthing

Vettel is 0 for 3 starting from the pole. Next time, reminds me to cheer for Webber to get P1.

A bad start by Seb and afterwards a flawless drive. A good start by Mark and than a good drive. Bad strategy by RBR even if it was difficult. Should have split them. Seb lost one place less than Mark.

H2H

2010

Qlfy.

Seb 3
Mark 1

3:1

Race

Seb 4
Mark 0

4:0

Points

Seb 45
Mark 28


AS-Ratings

Seb 29
Mark 20




Overall

Qlfy.

Seba 16
Mark 5


Race:

Seba 14
Mark 7


H2H

I think it's hard to rate this one for Seb. Mark was ahead at the second safety car and got rammed off by Hamilton, he went from being 2 spots ahead to 5-6 spots behind Seb at that point and ended up 2 spots behind him by the end. *shrugs*

I agree you could almost split this race between them, but Seb finished ahead and that's what counts.

Seb looked faster than Mark during most of the race and ended up beating him. Mark getting overtaken after a safety car period is nothing new.

Happens - Vet won from his poles last year. Circs will just cause a new race storyline every week. I thought he'd keep fighting behind Kubica, but at some point he stopped and lost a bit of pace - maybe tyres? I don't know what other reason he'd have... but they didn't show us him falling off the pace. I predicted this would not be much of a battle between Mark and Sebastian and I don't think it was. At some point tho, Sebastian ran by Mark without so much as a peep from his teammate - what was up with that?

wierd

Yeah, what the h*ll was that all about? And in the middle of the straight too! Wasn't as if he braked passed him, he just steered around him. I was wondering if Webber's gearbox had problems.

Not in the vs thread ;)



Mark looked faster in Malaysia, it's only a single facet of what we should be looking at. Mark wasn't overtaken, he was clearly rammed off the track, he wasn't the one who decided to make it three wide.

+1

But still a pretty bad race for both boys...

He was overtaken by Seb and Hamilton on track - or did you miss that?

I was responding to your comment "after a safety car period".

I did see him get overtaken earlier, after he got shafted in a pit call when he was the lead driver, putting him out half a second ahead of Ham and Seb (who were up to speed) with cold tyres was always going to lead to an overtake considering his straightline speed disadvantage. If the team was doing what it said it would do, Mark would've been 5-6 seconds down the road.

BTW how many overtakes did Seb have and how many Mark. It seems that Seb did quite some more. It is just a shame that the car has troubles to overtake cars like Renault, Ferrari and Mercedes as it just has not the speed, complicating things a lot for both drivers. Once again the F-Duct coupled with the Merc engine made overtaking far easier for drivers of the limo.

H2H

Overtaking didn't seemed to be a problem for the Red Bulls in the first half of the race. Seb even was close to overtake Lewis on the track. In the second half it looked quite different tho. I guess it had to do with the setup of the car. There was more water on the track in the second half. Maybe they were on a complete dry setup while others maybe made some compromises in the quali. It's part of the gamble in changing weather conditions.

Disappointing result for the RBR drivers - while I found it quite enjoyable to see Webber nail Seb at the start (and not a peep from jez33 on this one ) again I was yelling at the tv wrt RBR's tire strategy call.

Tough race for both guys - while I would like to split the points Vettel finished ahead so he gets the race...

On the BBC they were saying Webber was running more wing than Vettel, so had a significant straightline speed disadvantage.

They also mentioned that Webber was running the extra wing in case of rain. So I was expecting a fightback from Webber in the latter stages of the race (fastest car + wet weather set up - surely he should have been flying?), but it didn't materialise.

Running slightly more wing than Vettel doesn't constitute a wet weather setup - a bit more downforce whcih should make things easier but AFAIK apart from the wing the car was on the same/similar setup to Vettels?

Yeah, I realise that. But the way it was said in the commentary was definitely that he'd done this because of the threat of rain. I assumed that he or RB had said something to this effect over the weekend, given how sure they were that it was a rain-related reason. Still, commentary cock up would hardly be unusual ...


I haven't heard anything either way on that - they only mentioned the wing.

Now will Vettel be humble after his next pole position or will he give is all the finger again? lol Hope not, coz look at what happened again today. it just aint worth being a show off..

Agreed - IIRC Brundle said that Webber was losing 4kph to Vettel in a straightline although it looked more when Vettel passed Mark, however Seb getting a better run out of the corner on up to temp tires probably exaggerated things...



After qualy it was remarked that by Seb in the PC that he went towards Mark's setup for Q - I assume then that the two of them were on similar setups for the race apart from Mark running more wing...

He did what was possible, and did it overall better than Mark. I wondered why they didn't split strats right from that first pitstop.


H2H

This could be part of the reason why Seb had a slightly greater ease at overtaking and why Mark sufferd the tear of the inters first.


H2H

Like salt in my wound that is mate



Beats me...