Formula One News » Webber: Lewis deserved the win Posted on 30/08/2010
Despite losing his world championship lead after finishing second in the Belgian Grand Prix, Mark Webber has conceded that Lewis Hamilton deserved to win for the first time at Spa-Francorchamps.
Although he had crossed the line first in the event two years ago, Hamilton had been stripped of the win and was determined to set the record straight after qualifying second alongside Webber on Saturday. When the Australian made a sluggish getaway, Hamilton wasted no time in seizing the lead, and remained in front to the end, despite two rain interruptions and trip into the Rivage gravel trap.
“To have the top three qualifiers here, after a race like today, I think you would never ever get any money on that,” the Australian noted, “The order is slightly the wrong way round for me but, in the end, I’m happy with second. It’s a good day for the team, but Lewis deserved the win and did a good job.”
Webber revealed that he had been aware of a problem with his launch procedure during the warm-up lap, and was surprised to find that changes he made did not work when it really mattered.
“I had a big bog [down] on my formation lap, so then we made a small adjustment to the clutch which I thought was hopefully going to get rid of that situation,” he confirmed, “Then I had it even worse on the main start itself. I did my normal procedure but, in the end, you need to go through it to see what happened.
“Obviously, I was pretty surprised and, once you have a micro moment on the start in an F1 race, it is massively exaggerated with the performance of the other guys getting normal starts.
“There were no problems with the car after that, [but] it was pretty obvious the start didn’t go according to plan. Today’s run was fortunately one of the shortest to the first corner, [but] the boxing gloves will be on if they do it again at Monza next weekend. We got away with it here.”
Such were the starts around him, Webber was shuffled back to seventh place before beginning to reclaim positions as the opening lap unfolded.
“I was on the back foot through Eau Rouge, [and] had a pretty good fight with Adrian [Sutil] to start with,” he recalled, “I got that [position] back and passed Felipe [Massa] as well. I was pretty close to having a look at Seb [Vettel] before the safety car came out, but it was a pretty mixed up race after that.
“On the first lap, the rain had already arrived. The top two or three guys went across the chicane obviously, but that can happen, as it’s such an acute corner and very, very slippery in the braking area.
“We all scrambled through there, and I passed Felipe on that next lap. Then the safety car came out. I settled in, felt pretty comfortable. Jenson [Button] looked like he was struggling for pace, so the four of us were just biding our time and looking like we had to go quite long in that stint because it only really warranted doing a pit-stop if it rained or anything unusual happened.
“It was not really a normal grand prix in terms of strategy in that sense. So we had to hold fire a little bit longer than normal. I obviously had a crack at Robert, trying to get underneath him with the undercut – it nearly worked but, obviously, his boys did a good job in the pit-lane, because our guys really did a good stop.
“From then on, it was really just [about] getting the car home. It wasn’t very easy to follow Robert, to be honest. I wasn’t that comfortable on the prime at certain points – I was actually happier when it started to get drizzly on the slicks, as I felt a little bit quicker and I could close the gap a little bit.
“Then we had the pit-stops, I went a little bit lon,g but it looks like Robert went even longer, so that was the difference between us getting in and out. It’s so easy to over-jump your pit in those conditions. It’s dangerous for the mechanics, but they got away with it and that’s where we got second place.
“Intermediates got the car home. I was hoping this guy [Hamilton] would make a mistake, but it’s not his first race, so I’m very, very happy with second place, to be honest, especially after the start I had.”
Having not expected to take a strong result from Spa, Webber’s delight at limiting the damage to his title ambitions was obvious.
“These days, it is very, very easy to come away with nothing with a small mistake from anybody – from the cockpit, pit-wall, pit-stops or whatever,” he pointed out, “Everyone did their bit today, so we got some good points and we go to Monza.
“Lewis did a good first stint and, if it was a normal dry race, it would obviously have been his as well. Now we’re looking forward to Monza to see how we might go around there. We learned a bit in the race today to go forward.”
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