15 years ago: Webber wins first GP

Mark Webber fought back from a drive-through penalty and stormed to his first-ever F1 victory in the German Grand Prix on Sunday, July 12 2009.

“It is an incredible day for me.” the Aussie F1 ace said.

“I wanted to win so badly after [narrowly losing the British Grand Prix at] Silverstone. I thought I had a good chance there.

“But after yesterday’s pole position (here] I knew I was in a good position to try and win the race today.

“The only thing in the end that I thought was going to beat me, or test me even more, was the rain but even that held off.”

Sebastian Vettel had hoped to win his home GP, but had to settle for second after making a mistake in qualifying. gridding fourth, then dropping to sixth at the start and struggling in traffic.

“Congratulations to him [Mark]; today he was unbeatable so he totally deserved to win,” said Vettel.

“Another one-two finish for the team. I am very, very happy. I would like to say I am very, very pleased with second, but [in qualifying] yesterday Mark did a better job and that is why he deserved to win.”

The special Auto Action issue celebrating Mark Webber joining Sir Jack Brabham and Alan Jones

Felipe Massa showed that Ferrari is resurging by finishing in the top three for the first time this season.

“To be honest I miss to be here, to be in the top three, but it was a fantastic race,” Massa said. “I did a fantastic start, passed many cars.”

Webber started from the pole in his Red Bull Renault but lost the lead to Rubens Barrichello who had gridded second in his Brawn Mercedes.

As they raced towards the first corner, Webber slid over and bounced off Barrichello’s car.

The stewards, including the chief steward, Australian Garry Connelly, penalised Webber with a drive-through for deliberately causing a collision. But it had been unintentional.

“I thought it [the penalty] was a little bit harsh,” Webber said, “but maybe they wanted to spice things up a little bit. It is not really my style. I did definitely lose Rubens 100 per cent for a while.

“I moved across and then what made it worse was that I shitted myself and came back across again and I thought ‘My God, there he is!’ That’s what made it look mavbe a little bit worse than it was.”

In the melee at the first corner Webber tagged Lewis Hamilton as well.

“I got a good launch down to turn one, said Hamilton who started fifth and finished 18th.

“Then when I was braking, I had a tap from the rear and went straight on. I had the puncture, which damaged the rear floor and it made it like driving on ice out there.”

Barrichello came out in front followed by Webber. The duo quickly pulled away from Heikki Kovalainen who headed Jenson Button, Felipe Massa and Vettel in a four-car battle for third place.

Webber had a 17-second advantage when he came in to serve his penalty on lap 14, the same lap Barrichello made his first pitstop. Webber now led, and padded his advantage until he pitted on lap 19 and dropped to eighth.

“My engineer kept me calm,” Webber said, “and I pushed as hard as I could when I needed to.”

Such was the speed of Webber and the Red Bull that by the time the others had cycled through their pitstops Webber took the lead on lap 32 when Barrichello pitted.

After that, it was just a case of heading for the finish line. Vettel led once, on lap 44, during the final stops, but Webber cruised to the victory.

“It was just staying away from the kerbs,” Webber said. “Sebastian had a problem on Friday with the car in turn one with some issues we had there, so there were a few things I had to be aware of.

“And make sure I kept the car in the middle of the track and brought it home. There was no reason to finish 20 seconds in front instead of 10. As Jack Brabham used to say, Win at the slowest possible speed, so I was thinking of Jack today.”

Nico Rosberg finished in the points for the fifth time in as many races and a season-best fourth in his Williams Toyota. The once mighty Brawns just didn’t have the pace at the Nurburgring and the situation was made worse by the cool temperatures.

With tyre temperatures running 10 to 20°C lower than normal, Button and Barrichello had to weave their cars on the straights to try to build up some heat in the rubber.

Having led the first 14 laps of the race and seven more later on, Barrichello was furious to finish only sixth behind Button.

An emotional Barrichello told the BBC that the Brawn team putting him on a three-stop strategy after a refuelling rig problem caused him to lose a podium finish.

“I did everything I had to do,” he said. I had to go first into the first corner, and that’s what I did. Then they [Brawn) made me lose the race basically. If we keep going on like this, then we’ll end up losing both championships, and that would be terrible.

“To be honest, I wish I could just get on a plane and go home now. I don’t want to talk to anyone in the team, because it would be a lot of blah, blah, blah, blah… and I don’t want to hear that. I’m just terribly upset.”

Team owner Ross Brawn said: “Rubens had the 11th fastest time in the race today. You cannot win a race, whatever strategy you have, if your best lap is only 11th quickest. It is just not possible.”

On this particular day, however, it was not possible for anybody to beat the fleet Webber.

“What happened today is not going to change my life massively,” he said, “but it’s a very, very important thing. I will sleep well tonight.

“Everything’s fine but l’m not a different person because I’ve won one race. I’m just very, very happy that l’ve won it fair and square, that i’ve beaten everyone else today, so that’s the most important ting to me.”

2009 German Grand Prix results

Pos	No	Driver	Constructor	Laps	Time/Retired	Grid	Points
1	14	Mark Webber	Red Bull–Renault	60	1:36:43.310	1	10
2	15	Sebastian Vettel	Red Bull–Renault	60	+9.252	4	8
3	3‡	Felipe Massa	Ferrari	60	+15.906	8	6
4	16	Nico Rosberg	Williams–Toyota	60	+21.099	15	5
5	22	Jenson Button	Brawn–Mercedes	60	+23.609	3	4
6	23	Rubens Barrichello	Brawn–Mercedes	60	+24.468	2	3
7	7	Fernando Alonso	Renault	60	+24.888	12	2
8	2	Heikki Kovalainen	McLaren–Mercedes	60	+58.692	6	1
9	10	Timo Glock	Toyota	60	+1:01.457	20
10	6	Nick Heidfeld	BMW Sauber	60	+1:01.925	11
11	21	Giancarlo Fisichella	Force India–Mercedes	60	+1:02.327	18
12	17	Kazuki Nakajima	Williams–Toyota	60	+1:02.876	13
13	8	Nelson Piquet Jr.	Renault	60	+1:08.328	10
14	5	Robert Kubica	BMW Sauber	60	+1:09.555	16
15	20	Adrian Sutil	Force India–Mercedes	60	+1:11.941	7
16	12	Sébastien Buemi	Toro Rosso–Ferrari	60	+1:30.225	17
17	9	Jarno Trulli	Toyota	60	+1:30.970	14
18	1	Lewis Hamilton	McLaren–Mercedes	59	+1 lap	5
Ret	4‡	Kimi Räikkönen	Ferrari	34	Radiator	9
Ret	11	Sébastien Bourdais	Toro Rosso–Ferrari	18	Hydraulics	19

Image: Steven Tee/LAT Photographic

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