Mark Webber moved into second place in this year’s Formula One World Drivers’ Championship after he finished third in Sunday’s Hungarian Grand Prix at the Hungaroring, outside Budapest. With his Red Bull Racing team-mate Sebastian Vettel, failing to finish and championship leader Jenson Button only picking up two points for seventh place, the Australian moved 4.5 points clear of Vettel and is 18.5 points behind Button with seven rounds of the championship still remaining. 

Webber’s pre-race predictions that Fernando Alonso and McLaren would feature strongly this weekend proved spot-on, with the two-times former world champion Alonso claiming pole (albeit with a lightly-fuelled car) for the 70 lap race and reigning world champion, Lewis Hamilton, nicely placed fourth on the grid.

Despite the long drag to the first corner which should have worked to their advantage, the KERS-assisted McLarens of Hamilton and Heikki Kovalainen didn’t get the flying start everyone expected them to, largely due to the fact they started on the dirty side of the grid. On the other hand, Kimi Raikkonen made a flying start from seventh resulting in four cars including Webber piling into turn one! Hamilton briefly passed Webber but the Aussie had the better exit of the two and was able to take back second place from the Briton.

Meanwhile, Webber’s teammate Vettel who also started on the dirty side of the grid was slow away and went from second on the grid to seventh, banging wheels with a sideways Raikkonen at turn one.

Webber completed the opening lap in second place behind the nimble Renault of Alonso but had the rapid Hamilton on his tail. He was able to hold off the McLaren driver until lap three when Hamilton with the aid of the KERs system steamed past him on the exit of the first corner. Webber then had his mirrors full of Raikkonen and Nico Rosberg and spent the whole of the first stint of the race having to defend his third place.

Race leader Alonso was the first to pit at the end of lap 12 but his race was over a lap later when a loose front right wheel flew off after rejoining, thankfully bouncing safely out of harm’s way.  Meanwhile, the battle between Webber and Raikkonen was continuing although Webber had managed to eke out a slender 1.7 second advantage by the time they both pitted on lap 18. The RBR pit stop didn’t go to plan though, the pit crew having a problem removing the fuel nozzle from the car. This caused a delay and when Webber was given the OK, he was released straight into the path of Raikkonen’s Ferrari. Webber did well to avoid contact, conceded the position and duly followed Raikkonen out.

Once the first round of pit stops were completed, Webber found himself in fourth behind race leader Hamilton, Raikkonen and Toyota’s Timo Glock who was running a very long first stint and was, therefore, out of sequence. Having selected to run the middle stint on prime tyres, Webber fell away from Raikkonen who was on the faster option tyre. He was closely followed for much of the second stint by Kovalainen and former Williams’ teammate Rosberg but was able to go longer than both of them before making his second stop when he rejoined in a comfortable fourth place.  Webber was now fitted with the quicker option tyre while his rivals were on the less favourable soft tyre.

With the long running Glock still to make his second and final stop, Webber was effectively third. His next objective was to charge down the Ferrari of Raikkonen and as he reeled off a sequence of quick laps, he was able to reduce the gap to 3.9 seconds going into the last lap. In process, Webber set the fastest lap of race (the first of his career) with a time of 1:21.931 on lap 65.

“I expected us to be a little bit quicker after our running on Friday but to be honest we expected these guys (McLaren and Ferrari) to be around us,” Webber said. “We knew it would be a more difficult venue for us and that we wouldn’t have the advantage that we maybe had at the last two events so, all-in-all, I’m happy to get the result we did today.”

“I think we would have had a better chance to fight with Kimi if we’d made a slightly different pit stop and chose a different tyre for the middle stint but that was my call. I was worried about how long the middle stint was so it was quite difficult to know which tyre to put on. Overall we still have a lot of positives to take away from here – we’re still up there, we’re in the hunt and know that we can take our car to a lot of venues and be competitive. Red Bull and Renault have a lot to be proud of, we’re still a strong force and it’s a positive day.”