Webber celebrates his 150th in style

Racing in the 150th start of his F1 career, Mark Webber claimed his fourth Grand Prix victory of the year at the Hungarian GP to take the lead in 2010 the drivers’ championship. Following an incident on lap 15 that brought out the safety car, Mark and his Red Bull team decided not to pit and try to use the performance of the car to climb up the field. The strategy paid great dividends when Mark started turning in a series of phenomenal lap times and when he finally pitted on lap 43, his 23 second advantage saw him rejoin the race in the lead ahead of Fernando Alonso.

Following the race, Mark said that prior to his pit stop he had to drive “nearly every lap like it was a qualifying lap. I needed a 20s gap to Alonso, so I pushed very hard. There was an element of risk because we hadn’t done anything like a 42-lap stint on the option tyre during practice.”

Mark’s championship hopes were further improved when one of his main title rivals, Lewis Hamilton failed to finish the race with gearbox problems, and team-mate and early race leader Sebastian Vettel was penalised for infringing safety car rules. Sebastien Vettel’s third place, in combination with Mark’ victory, saw the Red Bull Racing team into the lead in the constructors championship.

With seven races left for the season, Mark is in a strong position to become Australia’s first Formula One champion since Alan Jones in 1980, however, there are still a lot of twists and turns to come. Webber noted that “it’s good to be leading the points standings, but there are still a lot of chapters to come in this world championship battle. The top five drivers are separated by 20 points, which is nothing”.

Up next is the Belgian Grand Prix which takes place after a three week break and Mark will make sure he continues his momentum into the next round, but in his own words, “not until I’ve turned my phone off and had a couple of weeks’ holiday!”

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