There were mixed emotions at Red Bull after the European Grand Prix in Valencia today: Mark Webber declared himself “very happy” after climbing from nineteenth on the grid to finish fourth, but team principal Christian Horner was left “bitterly disappointed” after Sebastian Vettel retired whilst leading the race.
“I'm very happy with that, obviously it's been a tough weekend up until today, but you never know what's going to happen,” said Webber, looking back over his last three days in Valencia. “In the middle of the race I wasn't too happy and I didn't really know what was going on. Then there was a bit of attrition at the front and the strategy worked out. We got it all working well today and we got some good points. It was a crazy day today – but I got points, so I'm happy with that.”
Horner congratulated Webber on his performance today, but was left lamenting the victory that slipped from his team’s grasp. “It was a bitterly disappointing race for Sebastian who had done everything right,” he said. “He looked to be in comfortable control of the race until unfortunately during the safety car period we had a suspected issue with the alternator, which caused him to retire. We need to get the car back to fully understand the failure which we will work through with Renault, as it looked similar to the one that Grosjean had today.
“Mark drove a tremendous race and the strategy worked well. He started on the hard tyres then went onto the softer tyres, picking off cars getting into tyre trouble at the end, so it was a great recovery from Mark who drove well.
“Others had their bad luck today too. In addition to Mark's drive, another positive is that we leave Valencia knowing we have a fast car. We've extended our lead in the Constructors' and Mark's recovery was very strong.”
Vettel sounded reasonably calm when looking back on his race. “At the moment it's not entirely clear what the problem was,” he explained. “I lost acceleration, the engine stalled and I couldn't do anything; that was it. You can't change it now. Up until that point it was clear we were strong, I was very happy in the car and had the pace. We were very quick today and it felt good. The initial re-start after the safety car was fine, but we're not sure of the exact problem, we'll need to look into it.”
