mark webber should walk away from hypocrite horner and red bull after team orders fiasco

i was reading this on the daily mail website and thought id share it here.

"We let our drivers race" Christian Horner said after Ferrari ordered Felipe Massa to allow Fernando Alonso take the lead of last season’s German Grand Prix.

‘It's wrong. It's wrong for the sport. The drivers should have been allowed to race,’ he added.

But fast-forward 12 months and the Red Bull team principal has adopted an altogether different mantra after instructing Mark Webber to ‘maintain the gap’ and ‘hold his position’ in his fight with Sebastian Vettel for second place in Sunday’s British Grand Prix.

‘It's a team result,’ Horner said in a dramatic U-turn that smacks of hypocrisy after round nine of the 2011 championship.

‘The last thing you want to do is see a team give away a whole load of points, so from a team point of view we decided it was best to hold the positions on the final two laps.’

‘I can understand he'd (Webber) be frustrated. But the last thing you want to see is both your drivers in the fence.

‘The message was quite clear to him what the team expected. Not what I expected, but what the team expected. He should be fine with that.’

Really? Webber, whose alias on Twitter is ‘Aussie Grit’, will be ‘fine’ about settling for third place?

A result which would see him lose further ground to Vettel in what could be his final assault on a Formula One world title... come on now – that’s just insulting.

Over 120,000 petrol heads descended on Norfolk to watch a motor race. They didn’t go to watch a controlled procession.

Okay, so Horner does have a point.

Red Bull came close to throwing away both the drivers’ and constructors’ titles last season. And it’s obvious they don’t want to go down that road again.

But even if both cars did end up in the aforementioned fence at Silverstone, Vettel and Red Bull would still lead their respective championships – and both by a healthy margin.

To Webber’s credit he ignored Horner’s plea not to fight Red Bull’s prodigal son. And guess what – they didn’t end up in the wall.

The veteran Aussie will sit down with Horner to discuss his future in the summer break, with both sides reportedly arriving at Silverstone ready to agree a new one-year deal.

But if Webber needed a catalyst to realise his future now lies away from Red Bull, surely yesterday’s incident was it.

The problem however, and it’s a big one, is just where can Webber go which will offer him the same race-winning chances?

The answer, and the conundrum facing the 34-year-old, is nowhere.

In the hands of the technical genius that is Adrian Newey, Red Bull Racing could dominate this sport for years to come, and Webber knows that.

Ferrari is his best, and probably only option. Felipe Massa, who has been out-qualified by Fernando Alonso in every grand prix so far this season, is coming under intense pressure at Maranello.

But would the Italian marque take a gamble on a driver, who’s likely to rock the Alonso-dominated boat. It’s unlikely.

At 34, Webber is running out of chances, and for as long as the brilliant Vettel is at Red Bull, he stands little chance of becoming the first Australian to win a Formula One world title since Alan Jones in 1980.

That would be a great shame. But with six career race-wins, and eight pole-positions, the likable Aussie hasn’t done ‘bad for a No 2 driver’.

link : http://duncanblog.dailymail.co.uk/2011/07/mark-webber-should-walk-away-from-hypocrite-horner-and-red-bull-after-team-orders-fiasco.html

The sad thing is Webber should have won the title last year. He threw it away and now the team ensures Seb has the best car and the best strategies and excellent reliability.

The only top team I could see him moving to is Ferrari but as Alonso is there, he will have to be a number 2 driver as Fernado detests competition from team mates