Mark Webber continued to impress in his debut Formula One season after
finishing 12th in Sunday's controversial and eventful Austrian Grand
Prix at the A1-Ring, Spielberg. Webber's result was all the more
remarkable after the Australian lost valuable time when he was issued
with a "drive through" penalty when his KL Minardi Asiatech
team mistakenly gave him the instruction to "race for
position" after a Safety Car period and a confusing spate of pit
stops. Unfortunately, as it turned out, Mark was actually in the process
of being lapped by the cars behind him and was penalized for ignoring
blue overtaking flags.
After qualifying 21st fastest, Webber had to resort to making a manual
start to the 71-lap race when his car suffered a launch control failure
at the lights. He eventually got away but had dropped to last position
behind teammate, Alex Yoong. However, Webber was able to re-pass Yoong
on lap four before passing the Arrows of Heinz Harald Frentzen to take
up the running in 16th position and just a couple of seconds shy of
Eddie Irvine and Takuma Sato.
A fiery engine blow-up on the BAR of Olivier Panis brought the Safety
Car out and with Sato opting to pit, Webber moved up into 14th position
on lap 25 although race leader Rubens Barrichello had already lapped
him. A serious accident involving Nick Heidfeld and Sato necessitated a
second Safety Car period almost immediately and Webber took the
opportunity to pit, which caused him to drop to the rear of the field
again.
The Safety Car pulled off at the end of lap 36 but amid the confusion of
the pit stops, Webber's team believed him to be on the same lap as the
mid-field runners and told him to "race for position," with
the Toyotas of Mika Salo and Allan McNish. However, it transpired that
Webber had lost a lap to the rest of the field when the Safety Car
picked up Barrichello at its first intervention, and Webber became
unavoidably stuck behind Barrichello and the Safety Car, while the rest
of the field was able to drive round to join the back of the queue.
After taking his penalty, Webber rejoined the race but by now had lost
any chance of gaining any further positions although his lap times
towards the end of the race provided some consolation, Mark setting a
best time of 1:11.819swhich was only two seconds off fellow Michelin
runners, Williams.
"Things certainly didn't pan out our way in the
race today," said Webber. "It
started off with a failed launch control which meant I had to re-select
the program so I could start manually. After that, things were going
quite well and I wasn't far off Irvine and Sato. But, then the Safety
Car came out and unfortunately Rubens had just passed me which meant the
Safety Car picked him up and I became stuck behind the two of them and a
lost a lap immediately to the rest of the field. When the race went back
to green for the second time, the team said everyone behind me was on
the same lap as me but as it turned out, that wasn't the case and the
Toyotas were, in fact, a lap ahead of me. Because I genuinely thought I
was fighting for position with Salo, I did just that so, of course, I
deserved the penalty when the truth became apparent! The team was
gracious enough to apologise to me and after I had taken the penalty, I
was very happy to be able to drive just a couple of seconds off the lap
times of the Williams which, to me, is a good indication of progress for
Minardi." |
