Webber goes up in flames - Pirelli, Red Bull and plain bad luck

When Mark Webber‘s Red Bull went up in flames after a spinning Sutil knocked out his car’s KERS system, Mr True Aussie Grit decided to vent out his frustrations on tyre manufacturers Pirelli.

This is what he had to say -

“That is how it is. The drivers aren’t super important – it is what other people want,”

“The tyres are wearing a lot and they also explode a bit – but that is for Pirelli to sort out.”

“Pirelli will put the puncture of Perez down to a lock-up but the reason the drivers are locking up is because there’s no tread left,”

But was it really only the fault of the Italian tyre manufacturer that was the cause of his rather spectacular blow-out. I think not.

Webber can blame his team especially his engineer and if it could be taken into account – his rather extraordinary lack of luck.

Just what went wrong that resulted in Webber getting knocked out of the race

1) Yes, Pirelli is not that innocent

Pirelli cannot go scot free as it wasn’t just Webber who complained about the extreme degradation of the Super-Soft option tyres at the Korea International Circuit. Fernando Alonso also vented his frustration on the tyre-makers after qualifying 6th at Yeongam.

“I think the tyres are what they are at the moment – and it is a tyre that cannot do five kilometres,”

“The quality of the tyres is on the limit.”

“It is the same for everybody and I am sure all the cars, if they pushed 100 per cent from the start of the lap, they would not last 5km. So this is not very helpful, and it is not very nice to drive like this for 95 per cent of the lap.”

The case for Pirelli was further dented after Webber picked up a puncture after Perez’s front right tyre gave up the ghost which really dented the Aussie’s chances of getting back to the front of the grid.

2) Red Bull messes up

When Webber pitted after the Perez blow-up, he would have expected his team to fit a set of new medium compound tyres to his car. However, much to his bemusement the Red Bull mechanics fitted him with yet another set of the madcap super-softs.

This lead to a rather interesting conversation over the radio, this time between Webber and his engineer Simon Rennie(the same guy Kimi Raikkonen told to shut up in Abu Dhabi yesterday)

Simon Rennie – “We are in a tricky position, the plan is to try to go to the end”

Webber – “Why did we choose the options?”

Simon Rennie – “We had nothing else left mate.”

With an answer like that, one really has to wonder whether Webber really gets short-changed when Red Bull distributes the brainiacs in the engineering department. Not only did they cost Webber his race, they also lost the team valuable points with regards to the Constructor’s title.

3) Webber is short changed when it comes to good luck

Let’s face it, Mark Webber and good luck just don’t seem to match. Add to that that Korea does not hold that many fond memories for Webber – He spun out in 2010 in the pouring rain after coming into the race with a 14 point advantage in the championship. Vettel also crashed out but went onto win the championship later that year. So it wasn’t any surprise that Webber was knocked out again this time after Adrian Sutil‘s Force India went into a suicidal spin

So tyres, a forgetful team and bad luck. Webber’s run at Korea basically reflected his career in F1. So it doesn’t come as any surprise that his career comes to an end in the same sputtering way its gone throughout his career.