Webber ignored team orders, in for “private talk” with boss

In yesterday’s British GP, the two Red Bulls were beaten by Fernando Alonso, with championship leader Seb Vettel in second and Mark Webber in third. The Aussie tried challenging his teammate for position right till the end, when we heard a team order calling for restraint.

But the team radio snippets that we hear on TV are delayed; “Mark, you need to maintain the gap,” was actually spoken around four laps from the end of the race. This means that Webber ignored the order and went for it. He has confessed so, and unhappy team boss Christian Horner will hold a “private talk” with the Aussie.

“I can understand Mark’s frustration in that, but had it been the other way around it would have been exactly the same. It happened a couple of years ago in Turkey when exactly the same thing happened with Sebastian, so it makes no sense from a team point of view to risk both of your cars. It was obvious that neither was going to concede,” he told Autosport

“And, as we saw with [Felipe] Massa and [Lewis] Hamilton at the last corner, who very nearly made contact, it made no sense from a team point of view to allow them to continue to fight over those last couple of laps. Mark obviously chose to ignore that and didn’t make the pass in any event, but that is the team’s position,” Horner added.

This effectively means that Webber will be just a supporter from now on then? “He is free to fight for race wins. He qualified on pole position here. He had the ability, the opportunity to win this race. It didn’t pan out for him today but we will continue to give him every chance to do so.

“From a team perspective, I made it quite clear in the drivers’ briefing this morning in front of the engineers, that the biggest thing today was about getting a team result in front of all of the staff who put in so much effort into both of those cars, for the Constructors’ Championship and the Drivers’ championship.

“At the end of the day, the team championship is every bit as important as the drivers’ championship to us. And we risked giving away 33 points today in the last three laps by allowing our drivers to fight it out. As we have seen previously, that can have dire consequences,” Horner explained.

© 2011 Paul Tan's Automotive News. All Rights Reserved.

This story originally appeared on Paul Tan's Automotive News on Mon, 11 Jul 11 02:46:02 +0000.

Related posts:

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2. Ferrari team boss explains “team orders” at Hockenheim
3. Ferrari wins German GP, but fined US$100k for team orders!
4. Webber is to blame says Red Bull bosses

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