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Webber: Team politics made British win sweeter

Mark Webber believes that his British Grand Prix triumph was made all the ‘sweeter’ after overcoming the political problems which embellished Red Bull’s race weekend.

The Australian was left furious by the team’s decision to remove a newly-designed rear wing from his car and give it to his team-mate Sebastian Vettel – whose own version of the wing had broken during final practice.

Despite emerging victorious at Silverstone, Webber later admitted that he felt that the decision had relegated him to second driver within the team and that if he had known this then he would not have signed an extension to his current contract.

Although team principal, Christian Horner, had insisted that the front wing did not produce a signifcant advantage over the previous design, sources close to Autosport report that there was both a lap time and a weight difference between the two versions.

However, writing on his website on Monday, the 33-year-old said that even though there was no way of knowing the real difference, the negative impact of the switch had made his victory even more special.

“Whether the gap between us in qualifying was the difference between the two front wings, I don’t know,” said Webber. “But it was a far from ideal situation and it definitely made my win taste even sweeter.”

Meanwhile, Sebastian Vettel has expressed his own distate for the politics which engulfed his team over the British Grand Prix weekend and hopes that more trouble does not lie ahead.

“I try to focus on myself, that is what matters,” Vettel said after the British Grand Prix. “We do have a very great car and, if you race cars with similar pace and guys with a similar speed on the track, then you get to see them once in a while. That is normal. It is racing, it is what it is about and it is what people love.

“The internal [situation]? If you look at the championship now, and if you look at the championship two races ago and if you look at championship two races ahead you probably don’t know what is coming up, we will see.

“Surely we could have done better up until this point, but it didn’t happen. I said on the radio that if someone for the weather forecast could turn the sh*t off for the future, because for some reason it seems to happen on our side pretty much, then that would be appreciated. It is life, and life goes on.”

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