This is at least what his Red Bull team principal Christian Horner told the media when hearing about the shoulder injury his driver sustained during a mountain bike ride, following the Singapore Grand Prix. After finding out about it from Webber's book and the recent media reports, Horner admitted frustration and disappointment over his being kept in the dark about the situation.
A few days later, several F1 pundits jumped to Webber's defense. The first one was VW advisor Hans-Joachim Stuck, former GP driver, who is known to be quite critic of Red Bull and their F1 strategy in recent months.
“Of course he has obligations to his employer,” he argued in an interview with the SID news agency,“but it (the injury) cannot have been very bad.” A strong supporter of Webber ever since the Turkish Grand Prix incident between him and teammate Sebastian Vettel, Stuck not only defended the 34-year old Aussie, but also praised his championship effort.
“To have that handicap and still show such good performance, I tip my hat to him. Without doubt he did everything possible to try to become world champion,” he added, while pointing out that he kept his injury a secret from his manager in order to “not weaken his position within the team.”
The only people who knew about Webber's injury were his trainer Roger Clearly and FIA doctor Gary Hartstein. The fact that he was given the go-ahead from the latter clearly suggests the injury was not very dramatic, although it clearly had an influence over his performance.
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