Mark Webber was left frustrated and confused at his home circuit as he watched Red Bull teammate Sebastian Vettel storm off into the sunset in Australia.
Webber was unable to match the pace of Vettel’s RB7 or second place Lewis Hamilton and even lost out to Ferrari's Fernando Alonso in the pit stops, ultimately finishing in fifth.
Webber has never finished above his fifth at his home grand prix and today was no different as he struggled to find any pace and found himself wearing out his tyres too quickly.
He said: “I wasn’t quick today and it was the same in qualifying yesterday, so we need to understand the reason why. There wasn’t much else I could do today, it was very frustrating.”
“I should be able to stay with these guys, but today I finished a long way behind. It was a tough race and I was pushing as hard as I could, but I wasn’t getting much back.”
“To finish that far behind is not really usual, but let’s stay cool; it's the first race. I'm looking forward to going to Malaysia; I wish the race was tomorrow already.”
“I was in a different race to Sebastian today, so we had to do different things. I was in trouble with the tyres much sooner than he was, so we need to have a look why.”
Red Bull boss Christian Horner was delighted with his team's weekend after such a dominant display by Vettel but revealed there is some hard work to be done to determine why Webber was so far back.
He concluded: “Unfortunately things didn't work out for Mark at his home grand prix and we need to understand why.”
“We took a slightly different strategic route with him running the harder tyre second, as his degradation seemed to be higher than Sebastian's.”
“It's something we need to look into on Mark's car, as it was an unusual difference between them this weekend that we don't normally see. I'm sure that will be back to normal for Malaysia.”
