Mark Webber: “There’s a fine line between racing and saving your tyres…”

A frustrated Mark Webber tumbled down to seventh in the closing laps of the Bahrain GP as he paid the price for excessive rear tyre wear – and was unable to defend his position.

He never caught up from a second stint that wasn’t as long as he’d planned, and at one stage the team thought he might even need a fourth stop.

Webber has made it clear that he’s no big fan of the way racing has unfolded in 2013 thus far.

“In the middle of the race I thought yeah we’ll be on the steps here, this looks alright,” said the Aussie. “It’s just pace management. When you’re in that situation if you get a little bit of a buffer it helps exponentially, you can wait and pace yourself. When you’ve got people on you there’s a fine line between racing and saving your tyres. I think I got one phone call to lift the pace and save your tyres. That’s how it these days.

“Maybe it looks quite good on TV, but we don’t have much to fight back with, that’s the thing. It’s good for the neutral at home, we’ve got obviously DRS and tyres that run out of puff, but it’s the same for everybody. It’s just a bit different, that’s all.

“I was racing at the end trying to hold position, of course. Not the finish we wanted, but the way it went.”

Summing up the first four races of the season he said: “I think I had pretty good momentum in the winter and drove well in the first three races. China was disappointing, the contact with Jean-Eric, but apart from that I think all-in-all I’ve been pretty happy with my form. I don’t think I’ve ever had a good result round this joint anyway, a bit of a bogey circuit. We’ll get back to Europe, regroup, and go again.”