The Australian driver kept his cool during an eventful race in Hungary, which saw a safety car and several pit lane incidents spice up things in its first half. It was actually his teammate Sebastian Vettel who started off great from pole position, while Webber was immediately overtaken by Alonso before the first corner.
However, the Safety Car was deployed 18 laps into the race due to somebody losing a front wing on the track. Vettel entered the pit lane at the last minute, followed by the majority of the front-runners in the same lap. Mark Webber was the only guy who chose to stay on the track.
The pit lane witnessed several incidents, with Nico Rosberg’s Mercedes W01’s losing its rear right side wheel, this traveling down the pits and eventually stopping in the Williams-Cosworth garage. Additionally, when trying to exit his pits to rejoin the track, Renault’s Robert Kubica was hit by Force India’s Adrian Sutil.
After the safety car went in, Webber started putting in fastest lap after fastest lap, distancing himself from Vettel and Alonso. Disaster struck for the German driver a few laps later, when the FIA stewards handed Vettel a drivethrough penalty for staying more than 10 cars lengths from Webber before the SC went in.
The penalty got Alonso into second place, but the Spaniard kept losing more than one second per lap to leader Webber. By the time the Aussie went in for a new set of tires, he had already secured more than 20 seconds of advantage in front of Alonso.
Webber returned after his pit stop more than 5 seconds ahead of Alonso, and the Ferrari-an settled to defend his position in front of Vettel until the chequered flag. The German was followed by Felipe Massa and Vitaly Petrov, who benefited from an early retirement from McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton to finish 5th overall.
The Russian therefore scored his best result of the season, as did 6th placed Nico Hulkenberg (Williams) and 7th placed Pedro de la Rosa (BMW Sauber Ferrari). Reigning champion Jenson Button had a nightmare race and had to settle for 8th place, while followed by Kamui Kobayashi (BMW Sauber Ferrari) and Rubens Barrichello (Williams). The F1 veteran overtook Michael Schumacher for the last point on Sunday with a couple of laps to go, but not until the German tried to push the Brazilian into the wall. Following the move, the Brazilian asked for the black flag for Schu, with the FIA stewards confirming there will be an investigation on the German's move.
In the overall classification, Webber is the new leader of the championship, while Red Bull overtook McLaren in the manufacturers’ classification. Perfect race for the Milton Keynes based team at their 100th race in F1!
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