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Vettel beat Mark this season with luck and team favouritism... although any of the top 6 with a bit of extra luck could've won this season, take Alonso, super consistent in a reliable but barely above average paced car, only lost by 3 points.

Vettel generally qualified better than Mark, and had better starts than Mark. The team can skew both of those things, and they did more often than not.

I hope Vettel matures at a faster rate because he still seems like a child throwing tantrums most of the time, it's the biggest reason why I dislike him.

Mark still proved he has the pace to fight with the best this season, a good comeback from last seasons woes. 2013 is where he needs to get more consitency so he is at the pointy end of the WDC come seasons end.

"stomped"........qualifying was 5 apiece.

But in another thread you reasoned that Alonso only passes Mark... " Fernando getting past Mark was PURELY the RBR's horrible top speed and gearing compared to Ferrari's straight line rocket".
And to somehow try and denigrate Vettel's "3point wdc" doesn't do Mark any favours when he finished a staggering 99 points behind...which is it? Vettel driving such a massively dominant car and only winning by 3 points must surely mean that Webber driving the same car being obviously several levals below other top drivers.....after 3 years of the excuses they become rather meaningless.

Like at Hungary, they pitted him unnecessarily to get him out of Vettel's way just to get him stuck behind slower cars. Or at Singapore, they followed the most retarded pit strategy known to man to get him somehow stuck dead last at the end. Or Abu Dhabi. Again, pitting him out of Seb's way resulting in a DNF for Mark.

His Brazilian GP was ruined by Kobayashi, but despite the fact Mark avoided seb all race he still trounced him in the end.

just seen the pic Mark posted on twitter of the rod removed from his leg

I can't even visit this thread any more.

If I based my choice of favourite driver on personality and ethical grounding, I think I'd have to go for Mark. A great article.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/formula1/21240896

“Look, everyone at this level has their own agendas and it’s been evident for a long time now that I’ve never been a part of Marko’s.”

If I based my choice of favourite driver on personality and ethical grounding, I think I'd have to go for Mark. A great article.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/formula1/21240896

and I also have a new race engineer in Simon Rennie (formerly of Lotus).

Mark Webber is faster than bare results show; his 2010 season was so close to bagging the WDC, he virtually equalled Vettel in every measure (speed, results,etc). Mark has put in some exceptional races , Silverstone with the old wing, Monaco twice, in 2011 with Rosberg breathing down his neck in a faster car and on a greasy track near the end. Not a single mistake.

Imo the effect of being a number two driver has a huge (negative) effect on results. It was the same with Coulthard in 1998-2000, when he was running so close to Hakkinen in speed. DC also often raced so well: at Monaco and elsewhere, yet the WDC points and results do not show the closeness in performance to their number ones.

The amount of media attention/time the number one drivers get is disproportiionate, so the 'other' drivers are significantly and unrealistically downgraded in perceptions.

Good to have threads on such drivers as MW.

All these official threads popping up, and none yet for my favourite driver, Mark Webber!

There has been plenty of discussion as to whether Mark can challenge Sebastian this year. I certainly hope he can, or at the very least improve over his 2011 performance, which overall was pretty strong - it just was made to look bad by Vettel's excellent campaign!

I frequently keep hearing that various changes to the cars/rules & regs may better suit Webber this year - can anyone elaborate on this for me?

The Aussie super-hero faces one of the largest challenges of his driving career. He has the maturity to be calm, but below his still waters is a deeper torrent. At 36, despite feeling young, Webber is forced to confront his fate.

Webber's tyres look in a lot better condition then Sebastians, Vettel did 2 flyers, Webber only did 1. Also Webber has the inside line and there shouldn't be too much difference between either side of the grid, lets hope for a good start.

Webber was 0.9 off Vettel in 2011 in Australia, so that holds well for a decent season from Mark.

Webber was 0.9 off Vettel in 2011 in Australia, so that holds well for a decent season from Mark.

Webber was ahead of Vettel after the first 2 sectors, it would've been close but I think Vetter still would've gotten pole because of his last sector.

I did notice Seb go purple in his in lap so he had wound up just in case Webber beat him lol, sneaky bastard.

Another season of going backwards at the starts then...

Decent save in the end from Webber, basically went from 7th to 6th despite the poor stop and timing on the stop.

not to mention his usual terrible start

Lost kers and telemetry right before race start. Makes the start pretty tough. His start looked OK the car didn't bog down or anything but without kers he was a sitting duck.

"Before the race even started we had a lot of problems getting the telemetry from the cars to the pits. We lost KERS (the car's kinetic energy recovery system), we lost quite a lot of things for the start," Webber said.

"We were on the ropes really before the lights went out.

"And then we went quite heavy on that first set of tyres."

Webber's awful start was then followed by an uncharacteristically slow pit stop - one of three his Red Bull had to make for tyres as the car struggled to live with the new Pirellis being used in the sport this year.

But despite all that, Webber believed he and his car were off the pace, even if he had managed a better start and with better tyre life.

"It looked like we were not that quick anyway to challenge for the win as a team. But of all the times in Melbourne I needed a safety car or something to spice it up, it never came.

"It's disappointing not to get more out of it."

not to mention his usual terrible start

Great drive by Webber considering the circumstances. Yet, those were expected since he always has rotten luck in Melbourne. Same as Rubens had at Interlagos