Webber disappointed after 'intense' battle

Mark Webber has to settle for third after a race long battle for victory in the German Grand Prix

Mark Webber said he was disappointed not to convert pole position into victory after settling for third in the German Grand Prix.

The Red Bull driver, who took his maiden win the last time the race was held at the circuit back in 2009, lost out to Lewis Hamilton when the lights went out although he was able to get back ahead of the McLaren driver during the first round of pitstops and held his lead through the middle of the race.

However, the second round of stops saw the Australian lose out to both Hamilton and Ferrari's Fernando Alonso and he was then unable to find a way back to the head of the field as he was forced to settle for the bottom step of the podium.

Although it allowed him to slightly close the gap in the championship to team-mate Sebastian Vettel, the third place finish means Webber has now failed to convert pole into victory in five successive races.

“I'm disappointed not to get the win today – but it's another good result,” he reflected at the finish. “At the end we needed to try and do something a bit different; we led the middle part of the race, but we couldn't get the tyre range around the pit stops to get the undercut on the second stop. I drove on the limit, but we were not quick enough and that was it. Lewis was able to cover us all the time and respond to my pace, so you couldn't get the gap. He got a good start and mine wasn't so good, but the starts aren't key to the race finishes this year.

“I did pretty much everything I could today – it was very intense racing between the three of us at the front. I was pushing to the limit, but there wasn't much more we could do to challenge for the victory. We're a strong unit though – a good team and we'll push on. We know what we need to do.”

Team boss Christian Horner agreed that third was ultimately the best the team could have hoped for from the race.

“We got Mark into the lead at the first pit-stop with the undercut, but unfortunately on the second stop the undercut didn't prove as powerful as we hoped and he dropped back to third,” he said. “We looked at going longer on the last stint, but ultimately P3 was as much as we could achieve at the end.”

Source: Crash.net