Webber to start German Grand Prix in 11th spot

August 2, 2003

After running consistently in the top 10 over the past two days, Mark Webber was disappointed to miss out on a top 10 qualifying slot for tomorrow’s German Grand Prix at Hockenheim, after a “moment” on the penultimate corner cost him valuable time on the third sector of his qualifying lap. Up until then, Webber had been looking good for eighth fastest but ultimately had to settle for 11th place with a time of 1min 16.775s, 1.3-seconds ahead of new Jaguar Racing team-mate, Englishman Justin Wilson in 16th.

“It was all going really well until I had the moment,” confessed Webber afterwards, “I probably asked a little bit too much of the rear on entry and on that sort of corner, it’s really difficult to get it back. We know there was a 16.4 there but unfortunately we didn’t do enough. But that’s what we get out of bed for in the morning – either go hard or go home!”

Webber chalked up an impressive number of laps on Friday and again this morning in the testing and practice sessions. In Friday’s two hour test session, he was fourth fastest behind the three Renaults and then set fourth fastest time in the official practice session. In the afternoon’s pre-qualifying session, the 26-year old Australian emerged an impressive fourth fastest with a time of 1min 15.030s while in this morning’s practice sessions, he was ninth (1min 16.953s) and sixth fastest (1min 16.474s) respectively.

“We’ve had a pretty good weekend although the acid test comes on Sunday. It’s clear we still need to improve our long runs but we haven’t had any reliability issues with the cars. Michelin seem to have a strong advantage over one lap although the battle is a bit closer after that. Overall though, I think Michelin has the advantage this weekend. We’ve done everything we can to prepare for the race so we’ll just have to wait and see what tomorrow brings. The weather is going to be very, very hot so it’s going to be a long and hard afternoon’s work for sure”

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