Mark Webber is basking in the glow of his Brazilian Grand Prix victory, but still laments a couple of missed opportunities in an up-and-down 2009 season.
Brazil must have been a big relief for you…
I did really need it. It’s what I said to Christian [Horner, RBR team principal] on the radio on the in-lap. That grid penalty for having a chassis change at Suzuka, for a such a little bit of damage, was so frustrating, as it was enough to kill my race weekend at a track where the car was very good. But for Brazil, I was at the front for the whole weekend, really. We knew after qualifying that I was in great shape to pull the win off, with the exception of Rubens [Barrichello] doing something phenomenal in the first stint, like pulling out a gap of six or seven seconds. It was unreal actually – the whole thing felt like a practice session.
You grabbed a big advantage over Rubens in the first stint. How much of that was down to the safety car and saving fuel in that first period?
When you have a safety car, you have an opportunity to make something of it. I was still having to go reasonably hard, but I was saving fuel in terms of where the engine was and by sitting behind Rubens. When he pulled, we changed the mixture and the combination of the safety car and fuel saving meant we went two laps more than target.
'If you’d said seven podiums, a couple of wins and quite a few fastest laps… I would definitely have taken that at the start of the year'
They say the first victory is the hardest and that the next ones are much easier. Was it that way for you in Brazil?
I was very, very composed. I watched the gap to Robert [Kubica], who was very short in the second stint and closed a bit. I also asked the team if anyone was on the option tyre, because if you could run the race without that, you wouldn’t use it. But they said Heikki [Kovalainen] looked good on it.
You’ve scored two wins on merit. How much confidence does that give you going forward to next year, knowing you can be a contender?
It’s been a very good season, I must say. I thought for a while that we could achieve something more than we did, but if you’d said seven podiums, a couple of wins and quite a few fastest laps – and given that it was my worst-ever preparation coming into the start of the season – I would definitely have taken that at the start of the year.
'When you are the pace, you can control a lot more of the weekend – we saw that a few times when Seb and I scored one-twos'
Is there a point in the season you look back to and think that’s where the championship slipped away – from you and the team?
I still think the double diffuser played a huge role in everything. It affects everything you do, your attitude towards races, how you go racing, and what you do if you are not quite on the pace. When you are the pace, you can control a lot more of the weekend – we saw that a few times when Seb [Sebastian Vettel] and I scored one-twos – and then it’s a lot easier. So there was a lot of damage done early on by the interpretation of that rule. Brawn got a one-two in Monza and we basically didn’t score. Seb got a point when Lewis [Hamilton] crashed on the last lap in Monza, but that and Valencia were tough races. Spa was actually pretty good, considering. Qualifying was a lottery, and I still to this day don’t understand how Force India did what they did there and we were back in the midfield. That Saturday was bizarre because we looked strong on Friday with the fuel loads we had. I got a drive-through in the race, which hurt, but we still got decent points there over Brawn – Jenson [Button] crashed and Rubens had that bloody oil on his exhaust! Since Singapore, we’ve been better off…
Tomorrow, Mark tells us about his impressions of the new Yas Marina circuit in Abu Dhabi, and reveals his post-season plans and his hopes for the 2010 season with Red Bull Racing.
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