Mark Webber: “Seventh with the penalty is not too bad…”

Mark Webber says he’s happy enough to start the Bahrain GP from seventh place, having qualified fifth before his Chinese GP penalty was applied.

Webber went back three places but gained one back because Lewis Hamilton also has a penalty.

Crucially Red Bull has saved a set of new prime tyres for use at some stage in the race.

“I was expecting a bit more from it to be honest,” he said. “It felt good in P2 and P3, so the build-up has been pretty good. Overall I would have liked to extract a bit more out of the car. It’s easy to leave a little bit of lap time round here by pushing just a step too hard. That’s the way it is for all of us, and there’s a lot of treacherous corners where like I say you can drop two or three tenths here and there.

“Overall I think it would have been very difficult for me to be on the front row, I certainly left a little bit out there. We’ve got a different strategy as well, we’ve got a set of primes on most people for the race. Seventh with the penalty is not too bad. It would have been nice to be a row further up at least with the penalty, but anyway it’s a long Grand Prix tomorrow.

“We know that we’ve got a bit more of an eye on the race in terms of how we’ve allocated the tyres compared to qualy. It’s nice to have as many sets as you can. We’ve got a few sets, so we’ll see how it pans out.”