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Question: Mark, Fernando mentioned the change of positions at the pit-stops. You received an apology on the team radio. Is that because the team believes you really should have finished second to Sebastian today?
Mark Webber: I think we should have but in the end we didn’t. It was a good race with Fernando. I think it was probably my best race of the year to be honest up until the last pit-stop. It was quite close with all three of us. We are trying to go as fast as possible while managing the tyres at the same time. It is always the same these days. I was very, very happy with how the race was going until the last stop. It was my fault basically not the team’s. I was worried about Fernando coming underneath me around the stops and it was not really known how the medium tyre would perform on the out lap. For sure, it is not as good as the soft but is it better than an old soft? That was the risk I decided to take. I lost out. Fernando stayed out for a few more laps and also I came out behind a little bit of traffic so my fault we missed second today and Fernando drove a good race. All three of us were nip and tuck all the way to the end. At the end the gearbox was playing up. We had to back right off but we had a massive gap to McLaren, they were one sector behind at least if not two, so we could cruise to the end and look after the gearbox.
Question: Mark, it is your first points on this street circuit but you are after victories too, so how close are you to Sebastian in terms of achieving that?
Mark Webber: Well, I think we saw today it was the closest I have been for a while. In qualifying in Canada it was very close between us with the KERS situation but racing when it counts. But I think I am getting better. Today’s race proved that up until the last 15 per cent where it didn’t quite go our way. That’s the way it goes where it is a fine line racing against these guys. I learnt a lot today. I was happy with my performance and I will come back better for the next race.
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Formula 1: Sebastian Vettel Strolls to European Grand Prix Victory
Formula 1: European Grand Prix - Race Results
Question: Mark, well done and it’s great to hear that you get such satisfaction from a third place.
Mark Webber: I think there are a lot of positives from this race for me. It was a clean, straight fight at the front for the first time since Turkey, probably, not having any real hiccups in either qualifying or the first lap or something like that. There wasn’t a huge amount between all three of us, I think all of us were pushing as hard as we could, but also nursing the tyres, getting as far as we could on the tyres. So it was nice, for a change, to always have Seb in sight, that’s the first thing, so he was certainly there and Red Bull’s stops were obviously always close together. I’m disappointed myself at the end I probably pitted a bit too early on the last one, because the warning on the option was pretty quick in terms of if you needed to pit, so I was a bit worried about Fernando coming underneath us but the big question mark was how was this tyre going to perform in the first eight sectors of its life? And it turned out it was marginal against a used option and also I had a little bit of Vitaly and Rubens, I think, but that didn’t cost me so much. It was just trying to get the car going on that compound so in the end, that was my call, so no fault of the team, at all. They did a really good job around the stops. I think we got all the other stops really good; together we did that, and then the last one didn’t go our way so a lot of positives. We didn’t give it to Fernando but we helped him get second, but anyway, a very strong result. The pace was quick at the front and I was happy to be amongst it for the majority of the grand prix until 15 per cent to go and then we had a problem with the gearbox in the last seven laps, when I obviously had to nurse the car home. It was good that McLaren weren’t so strong, so we could nurse the car home.
Question: Are you not a little concerned that your huge advantage from the previous races seems to be becoming a little thinner now?
Mark Webber: I think this is probably our weakest track of the year, maybe, so we didn’t do too badly today on a very weak track. We have a different regulation from Silverstone onwards and we expect that we can still be pretty competitive again. If we can keep Valencia as one of our weakest, definitely our top three weakest tracks, we didn’t do too badly today, so we should go OK on the other ones.
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