Mark Webber’s not over yet

Mark Webber has insisted he is not giving up on his championship challenge this year.

Webber who is team mate, Sebastian Vettel’s closest challenger for this year’s title, has insisted that “anything can still happen before the end of 2011 season”. 92 points separate the pair, with just seven races remaining.

Webber who recently extended his contract with Red Bull for another year also said he is looking forward to starting the 2012 season afresh and taking the fight to Vettel.

But that doesn’t mean he hasn’t given up on 2011.

“I’m still driving well,” he said in his BBC column. “I had a bit of a slow start to this year because it took me a little while to get on top of the new tyres. I’m looking forward to taking on Seb – and everyone else – again next year.

“But this year isn’t over yet. There are still seven races to go, starting with Monza next weekend, and anything can still happen.”

Webber also commented on Red Bull’s 1-2 result at Spa-Francorchamps, saying it was one of the team’s best performances to date. Especially since the team overcame tyre blistering problems to finish ahead of the rest of the field. During qualifying the cars’ high camber settings caused the Pirelli tyres to blister and there were serious concerns before the start of the race as to whether the compound would hold up.
However, after a number of alterations to tyre pressures before the start of the race, and then Red Bull’s decision to pit both cars in the first five laps to take on fresh tyres, fixed the problem. Although, Webber did admit that he and the team had not been expecting such a good result under these circumstances.

“Although we could have reduced the camber, it was not absolutely clear that would fix it,” he added. “We push the cars to the limit and this was just something that happened. Because of all the tyre problems, we went into the race thinking about damage limitation rather than victory. But we made all the right decisions as a team and it turned out we got the ultimate result. We were very surprised by that.

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