Camaraderie between Webber and Vettel: No meaning found

If everything had happened the way it was supposed to between Mark and Seb in the 48th lap of the Malaysian Grand Prix, would the Bull family have lived happily ever after? This is probably the way the world wanted to see it; Mark Webber leading the Grand Prix from his teammate and keeping the lead till the chequered flag. And I don’t see why the world wouldn’t want to see this happen, considering all that sticks to people’s minds is ‘breaking the rules’, myself included.

Say Mark Webber takes the win, and the podium isn’t all that very depressing. There will be another child in this story who’ll crib about the team that held him back from a potential victory and that’ll be Sebastian Vettel. You may think ‘ah he’s had 26 victories before! what’s with one which couldn’t be put in the bag’?, but every victory is a huge deal in F1. It’s good for the sport, and of course, it’s good for the driver and the team. But fighting against a teammate, disobeying some orders, being able to take all the criticism for that one position – that is the stuff of champions. The ‘win at any cost’ is what makes champions like Schumacher, Senna, Jackie Stewart and all others. And that’s the difference between Mark Webber and his teammate. Now the story is a bygone. If Mark Webber had won, he’d still be number two, if Sebastian hadn’t won – his position in the team sure as hell wasn’t going to change. So let the result be as it is.

In the vast, extensive history of Formula One, starting from the 50s (and still running successfully), team orders have been a crucial part of the sport. But the most recent one was “Alonso is faster than you” by the Ferrari team in 2010 – no big deal was made out of that. In fact, as a slap on the wrist, the team just got fined a couple o’ million. “Mark, we need to maintain the gap” in Silverstone 2011, to Webber who was running behind Vettel, is another one that comes to mind. He disobeyed the order to go and attack his teammate. The only difference in Malaysia was Vettel made the move stick after disobeying the order. One thing for certain is that even if Webber had won this race, there would have been no clear air between the 2 teammates as the tiff in Turkey 2010 would have clouded it all again.

The most recent news flash is Webber’s new ‘camaraderie’ act!

After Sebastian Vettel further fuelled the fire in China by quoting “He (Webber) didn’t deserve to win”, Mark Webber told IANS via email, “Now it’s my 7^th season, my partnership with Red Bull racing is one of the longest between a driver and a team. Sebastian and I are a team and we share great camaraderie”. Too good to be true, eh?

Mark Webber reached another career landmark in the 2013 Bahrain GP, which was his 200^th race and happened to be won by his teammate. A week earlier, there were reports of him ending his F1 career forever by leaping into the world of LeMans with the Porsche team. Though according to him, it was a negative. But that wasn’t much of a surprise after he said ‘there was a lot going on in my mind in the last 15 laps (of the Malaysian GP)’.