Webber: RBR 'not at our normal level'

Championship challenger Mark Webber has expressed concern at Red Bull Racing’s lack of speed in free practice at Valencia, admitting the team is “on the back foot” after the opening day.

Webber was eighth fastest in the morning session and slipped to 14th in the afternoon – and while Friday lap times are an unreliable guide to form, the Australian has no doubt that RBR is short of pace at this early stage of the meeting.

“For sure there were a few different fuel loads floating around, as usual on a Friday,” he told reporters.

“But still, we’re not at our normal level at the moment. We’ve got a bit of work to do.”

Asked to pinpoint the main problem, Webber answered: “The lap times! The car doesn’t feel too bad – it’s just the lap times.


“Normally we’re doing it to other people, but today they are doing it to us. We’re a little bit on the back foot today.”

Webber added that the team had expected to be more competitive when it arrived in Valencia, even though it knew the stop-start street circuit would not play to the strengths of the RB5.

“We’ve been very strong in the last six races, no question about it; the team and myself have had very good momentum,” he said.

“We knew that this might not be one of our stronger venues, but we expected to be better than we were today, so we’ve got some work to do tonight.”

Team-mate Sebastian Vettel was a little happier with his car’s performance after finishing the day in ninth place, but confessed to being surprised by the speed of Renault’s Fernando Alonso, who led the otherwise closely-packed field by 0.8s.

“Today seemed to be okay, there were no problems so we had a smooth Friday,” said Vettel.

“I think we are more or less in the pack, but Fernando [Alonso] was very quick towards the end of the second session, which was a surprise.

“We need to improve for tomorrow, so we will look at our day carefully and see where we were lacking compared to the others.”

Source: ITV