Meanwhile Webber has dropped one position to ninth in the Drivers Championship.

Webber’s result could have been scripted before the start, such was the predictability of the race. Despite maintaining his eighth place starting position on the first lap after a scrap with Renault’s Nelson Piquet, the Australian lost position to both Toyota’s Jarno Trulli and Piquet at the first round of pit stops by stopping early on lap 18. On his return to the race, Webber found himself battling for ninth place with BMW’s Robert Kubica who, in turn, had been jumped by Fernando Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen in the stop who both went longer.

Webber ran the second stint in 10^th position although he briefly held ninth after Lewis Hamilton picked up a puncture and had to pit out of sequence, rejoining eight seconds behind Webber. However, the McLaren driver was lapping almost a second quicker than Webber and when the RBR driver pitted for his second stop on lap 47, Hamilton moved ahead. Webber ran in 11^thposition before his Red Bull Racing team-mate, David Coulthard, made his second stop.

Tenth became ninth three laps from the finish when race leader Felipe Massa suffered a spectacular engine failure on the home straight and retired, handing the lead to McLaren’s Heikki Kovalainen who went on to score his maiden F1 victory from Timo Glock scoring a career-best second place and Raikkonen.

“My start was average,” said Webber afterwards, “but I managed to have a good fight with Nelson in turns one and two. He got me in turn two but then ran wide in turn nine. I settled into the first stint and tried my best to stay in touch with Fernando and Kimi. Unfortunately I couldn’t pull out enough of an advantage over Jarno Trulli as I knew he was much longer than me and so he was able to jump me easily at the first stop. Then, it was a fight between Robert and me – both of us seemed to be struggling for rear grip in the second stint. I knew Robert was one lap longer than me and so the chance of gaining another position on-track wasn’t going to happen. So, from there on in, it was just a matter of bringing the car home and keeping the pressure on Robert around the pit stop.

”The last two races haven’t been good to us because it seems that RB4 is currently better suited to faster, flowing circuits such as Barcelona and Silverstone. We need to improve the downforce level of the car at slow-speed circuits because we have a couple of them coming up, such as Valencia and Singapore.” 

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