Mark Webber: World Champion Material?
The early hours of November 15, 2010 were greeted with an ear piercing rendition of the theme music to “Beverly Hills Cop” from the alarm on my mobile phone, signifying the end of the tactical nap before the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, after which there would be some more sleep before the start of an otherwise typical working week. A two-stop strategy, if you will.
At that ungodly hour of the morning, the list of Australians to win the Formula 1 drivers championship stood as follows: Sir Jack Brabham (a 3-time champion) and Alan Jones. It was an admittedly short list. But one that had the potential to grow over the next two hours.
Mark Webber had been in control of his own championship destiny coming into the Korean Grand Prix, the third to last race of the season. However, an accident that led to his retirement from the race and a subsequent second position behind teammate Sebastian Vettel at the Brazilian Grand Prix left him with plenty of work to do and in need of a little assistance. Trailing Fernando Alonso by eight points in the championship race and with a further seven point gap back to Vettel, a victory for Webber and a third or worse placing for Alonso would see the third Australian drivers champion crowned.
However the early signs were bad. Webber qualified fifth on the grid, behind Vettel, Lewis Hamilton, Alonso and Jenson Button. As any devout Formula 1 fan knows, overtaking moves are few and far between, and thus Webber would most likely need to rely on getting the best of the pit stop strategies and potentially leaning on some reliability issues for his key opponents. The next couple of early-morning hours were an unpleasant blur – Webber’s pit stop strategy arguably panned out the worst of the contenders as he finished in eighth, Alonso mirrored the moves of Webber (in order to counter his nearest title challenger) and fared almost as badly with a seventh placed finish, while Vettel chose a different path and cruised to victory and his first world title. I crawled back into bed for a few hours and spent most of that Monday cursing the two-stop strategy I’d adopted.
With the first race of the 2011 season set down for March 13 in Bahrain, the question lingers – can Mark Webber reach the elusive crown this season, or was the 2010 season his best shot at the title? At the risk of being considered unpatriotic and/ or pessimistic, I can see a couple of potential drawbacks to his championship hopes. One has the potential to be either insignificant or fatal depending on how the cards fall, while the other appears to be a more systemic problem.
The more uncertain of the two potential drawbacks relates to the variability from one season to the next of which manufacturer produces the best car. In 2010, Red Bull won the constructors’ title from McLaren, with Ferrari in third and Mercedes in a rather distant fourth position. By Formula 1 standards, three legitimate contenders for the constructors’ title is a more competitive year than is typical.
In 2009, Brawn (subsequently bought by Mercedes) won the title from Red Bull, with McLaren a distant third just ahead of Ferrari. Ignoring McLaren’s subsequent loss of all championship points in 2007 (for illegal possession of confidential Ferrari data), McLaren and Ferrari dominated the landscape in 2007 and 2008, while in 2005 and 2006 it was Renault and Ferrari duelling for top honours with daylight in third. The underlying points to take from this are (a) rarely are there more than two legitimate title contenders; and (b) those contenders can change from one year to the next. If Red Bull is not one of the best two constructors in 2011, Webber can all but kiss the drivers’ championship goodbye.
The second potential drawback received some public exposure for the first time immediately after Webber crossed the line to win the British Grand Prix, where upon he said over the team radio: "Great job guys – not bad for a number two driver". The comment was aimed squarely at Red Bull chief Christian Horner, and in subsequent post-race interviews he went on to state that he would not have signed a contract with Red Bull for the 2011 season if he had thought he would be treated as the number two driver. All of that is fine. Indeed, it would be discouraging if Webber had conceded defeat and accepted the number two role midway through a title chase that was still on in earnest. But one issue is left outstanding.
By any reasonable measurement, Sebastian Vettel is the best driver at Red Bull.
To recap, in each of 2009 and 2010, Vettel scored more championship points, won more races and claimed more pole positions than Webber. The pole positions comparison is poignant – race wins and points positions can be impacted significantly by pit stop strategies, car reliability and in some cases, driver error. Whereas aside from changeable weather and the occasional oblivious backmarker, pole position is invariably taken by the fastest driver in the fastest car. Vettel claimed pole four times in 2009 to a solitary pole for Webber, while in 2010 the ledger stood at ten to five in favour of the German.
The comparisons don’t end there. In 2008 Webber drove for Red Bull, while Vettel drove for Toro Rosso, who were and still are essentially the ‘sister’ team to Red Bull. Webber scored 21 championship points, while Vettel scored 35 points and recorded his maiden race win in the inferior Toro Rosso. In the three full seasons Vettel has spent as a Formula 1 driver to date, he has outshone Webber in every year, and thus is entitled to the mantle of number one driver at Red Bull.
Consider the following list of world champion drivers over the past 20 years and their respective teammates.
Hill took over as the number one driver at Williams following the departure of Prost after 1993 and the untimely death of Senna at the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix, while Villeneuve took over as the number one driver at Williams following the departure of Hill after 1996 (a move to Arrows that defied belief at the time and does so to this very day). Those were the only two cases in recent history in which a teammate of a champion went on to become champion himself. Unless Red Bull become uncompetitive again (as recently as 2008, they ran seventh in the constructors’ championship), I don’t see Vettel jumping ship.
One final argument – world champions also have a history of demolishing their teammates not only in the championship years, but in the years where their car is less competitive. After fighting with Hamilton for alpha dog status at McLaren in 2007, Alonso returned to Renault and outscored his teammates 87 points to 19 over the next two seasons in a distinctly uncompetitive car. Hamilton himself outscored Kovalainen 49 points to 22 when McLaren’s fortunes went south in 2009. From 2003 through to 2008, Button outscored Barrichello and Takuma Sato by a total of 204 points to 85 in the enigmatic Honda entries. In the aforementioned 2008 season for Vettel with the Toro Rosso team, he outscored Sebastian Bourdais by 35 points to four. Mark Webber has no such history, outscoring his respective teammates at Williams and Red Bull by 74 points to 56 over the four seasons preceding Vettel’s arrival.
Ironically, Webber’s teammate at Red Bull prior to the arrival of Vettel was David Coulthard, another member of the ‘teammates of champions’ club. Ultimately Webber’s legacy is likely to be similar to those of Coulthard, Barrichello, Berger and the like – an excellent driver who won multiple races and had a distinguished career, but always seemed to find one or two that were better than him in any given year. Just know that if the 2011 championship race reaches the final race in Brazil in late November and Webber is still in the title hunt, the two-stop strategy will be adopted again.
