Webber only a qualifier?

[Mickey T]

He doesn't look utterly confident and tends to make clumsy errors occasionally - the last one being a spin at the entrance of the pitlane at Melbourne. .

the melbourne spin was caused by a fly-by-wire throttle glitch in the electronics, which went haywire after the first pit stop. he's also been notoriously hard on his fuel flaps.

He's comfortably outpaced DC in qualifying and in races - at least until the gremlin-magnet side of his character comes out.

Oh, and some ideas on the subject from the horse's mouth...

Last year was probably the first time I felt really comfortable with my racing performance for every lap of the season.
I would get to the point of finishing races 20 or 30 seconds behind Kimi after 90 minutes of racing, knowing he was in a McLaren and I was in a Williams and that’s not a bad effort over a race distance.
Sometimes it was a reasonable race car as well, last year’s Williams. It just wasn’t reliable enough on the days when it was fast enough.

Turkey was a cracker for us. Just made the top 10 and came out of turn one in fourth and had a faultless race. Then we both got smashed in times, with the 14th fastest race lap.
It’s all about tyres in Formula One. You find out how tight the balance window of the car is. That’s the difference between fast, consistent stints and falling away on long runs. That’s the difference between good racing cars and mediocre ones.
The designers are fighting to get a bigger balance window the car can operate in over the whole life of the tyre.
Over a 25 lap stint they change and scream and struggle.

When they brought out the one-lap qualifying distance I thought “I am going to hate this”. I would much rather go out there and get the rhythm of putting laps together. What I didn’t realize was so did every other *******. I would much prefer the old way.
In the race or in qualifying when we put the new tyres on, that’s the difference. Most guys can do the times on old tyres or scrubbed tyres.
When you get fresh tyres it is an art. Some drivers may not be able to put it out on the limit like others can.
In Hockenheim, we qualified 11th and sat 4th, 5th or sixth most of the race. When we are trying to race in these positions where we are qualifying it’s tough.
You look at any races in the year, it’s just a perception from the Jaguar days (qualifying).
It was an unbelievable qualifying car and a very poor race car.

then 2005 was a pain in the arse with the one-tyre thing. At Jaguar and Williams we were legendary at **** starts. Last year we could have good starts.
I am cool with it (the perception of being just a hot qualifier). I had a good season as a racing driver last year. I was happy with it and I know I didn’t leave much in it anywhere in races.
Sometimes I can get behind guys struggling with balance and wonder how it can be so bad, but I know other guys have thought the same thing behind me.

[millencolin]

The Red Bull appears to be quite a good car this year, and all Mark needs is a bit of luck with reliability issues.
Maybe he ought to drink more of that goop.

no no DONT DRINK IT MORE... drink too much and it becomes addictive! I'm a recovering Red Bull addict : Used to drink a lot of it when i was a projectionist... took a year to break the addiction, now i can seldom enjoy my red bull with vodka every saturday night