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Red Bull has confirmed Mark Webber will be staying with the team for 2013, ending speculation about his future.

Webber said in a statement: “I’ve been with Red Bull Racing since 2007 and have achieved nine grand prix wins during that time. I’m high on confidence at the moment and firing on all cylinders. I know the Team well and I’m very comfortable here; we have grown together over the years and it feels like absolutely the right thing to stay with Red Bull for another season.

“The Team is constantly working hard to improve in all areas and we’ve shown that together we can win races. It’s great to be able to make this announcement off the back of the win in Silverstone at the weekend and I’m looking forward to competing on the edge and pushing myself in every race again next season.”

Christian Horner added: “Mark has driven very well in the first nine races of this season and his performance has been impressive. Much of his Formula One success has been during his time with Red Bull Racing and together we have achieved 10 poles, nine wins and 31 podiums.

“As there was a strong desire from both sides to continue the partnership, it was a logical decision to extend our relationship and it is with great pleasure that we confirm Mark will drive for us in 2013.”

Christian Horner has stressed that Red Bull is hoping to finalise a contract extension for Mark Webber for 2013, despite ongoing suggestions that the Aussie is hoping to end his career with a spell at Ferrari.

Webber has been on a series of one-year deals in recent times, but any suggestions that he might retire have been dispelled by his current strong form.

“Very simply we have a great relationship with Mark,” said Horner. “I think Mark wants to be in the team next year, and therefore as we’ve always stated during the summer we’ll sit down and talk about his future. That period of time is obviously coming a bit closer, over the next few weeks we’ll be talking about 2013.

“As always with Mark things are pretty straightforward. He’s been with the team for seven seasons, he’s had all his success in F1 with this team, and we’d like to see that continue.”

Horner doesn’t expect the mooted Ferrari move to happen.

“Inevitably there’s an awful lot of speculation surrounding Ferrari. We can only focus on ourselves, we can’t control what other people say or do. I think Mark feels comfortable in the team, and over the next few weeks we’ll sit down and talk about his future.

“Mark’s given me every indication that he’s happy here. You can see that in his driving. I think he’s driving very well this year. He’s wintered well and he’s driving very well. He’s won two big races now, the Monaco GP and the British GP, and I think his drive today was excellent, it was inch perfect.”

Christian Horner says he has no worries about a repeat of the problems Red Bull experienced in 2010 now that Mark Webber  and Sebastian Vettel are both serious title contenders.

In a similar situation two years ago there was considerable tension in the camp, highlighted by the Silverstone wing saga and their clash in the Turkish GP.

“It’s a nice headache to have,” said Horner when asked by this blog. “As we always do we’ll do our best to support them, and ultimately it’s down to what they do on the track. At the end of the day Mark won this race because he deserved to win this race, and he drove a great GP.

“I think 2011 was a very tough year for Mark, but credit to him, he’s gone away and reflected on that season and come back and got himself in great shape. I think he’s very comfortable in his approach and in his mind, and possibly some of the regulation changes have helped as well. He’s very much a championship contender. We’re in a fortunate position where we’ve got both of our drivers as genuine championship contenders.”

Horner says the relationship between Webber and Vettel is better than it was.

“I think they’ve spent more time racing each other. They sit in 100s of hours of meetings together working on developing the car, they work as team members, and then it’s down to what they do on the track. I think there’s a genuine respect between the two of them.

“Sebastian’s achieved a huge amount in a short space of time, but he knows in Mark he’s got a very genuine competitor. Mark knows Sebastian is the benchmark or has been the benchmark for the last few years. It’s a healthy situation for the team.

“I think they have more experience, the team has more experience. We’ve seen them race closely at previous races and I’m sure there will be close racing between them in races to come.”

Fernando Alonso continues to lead the World Championship after his second place in Silverstone, but Ferrari boss Stefano Domencali says he isn’t taking anything for granted as the championship battle gathers momentum.

Alonso lost out to Mark Webber at Silverstone, but he gained ground on other key rivals, including Sebastian Vettel.

“It’s great to see that Fernando is still leading the championship of drivers,” said Domenicali. “It is from the sporting point of view good to see Lewis losing some points, Sebastian too. But it’s also good to see Felipe having a good performance today, because we have jumped in the classification on the constructors’ side, and now we’re second. And that is very important.

“And if we look at the classification of today with the first four cars in nine seconds it means for sure we have done a step in the right direction from a performance point of view.

“But it is a very open championship. I don’t believe honestly that the others will stay behind, I’m sure that McLaren will fight in order to come back. The others are very close. Today I was impressed by the pace of Lotus, who were very, very quick.”

Regarding Ferrari’s recent surge in form, he said: “I think it’s not a single factor, it’s a lot of things that are all together, and it’s a matter of keeping the right work on the start, the right approach on the reliability, it’s a matter of keeping the development race by race. The Mugello test was important, but after the test every race we brought some other pieces, so it’s really important to keep that as a stream together in all the areas.

“With such a tight competition if you are behind in one area, then it will be a problematic end to the season. I’m happy to see that the people are concentrated on the job, do not care what [criticism] is all around, and stay concentrated. I’m not happy up to the moment when really our car will be the strongest. At the moment we are not for sure, but we are getting very close.”

Lewis Hamilton admitted he was surprised to find himself finishing the British GP in the same eighth place that he started from, after McLaren struggled to find enough pace over the course of the afternoon.

In fact both Lewis and 10th placed Jenson Button were lucky to even make the points, as they both benefited from the Perez/Maldonado clash and Kamui Kobayashi’s pit stop drama.

“It was a disappointing day in the sense that we could have gone further forward, and I wish we could have done more for the fans, and given them even more of a result,” said Hamilton. “And I pushed as hard as I could, I was flat out right to the end. For some reason I didn’t have any speed.

“We have to have a balance to make the tyres last, and I think the balance was not so bad, because I was in the lead at one point, I was the only one who hadn’t pitted, but after that we just didn’t have the pace of the others. They continue to improve. We thought we were going to do better here this weekend, with the downforce package, but obviously not.

“I pushed every single lap, raced my heart out as always, and we just struggled today. Just didn’t have enough speed in general. Jenson seems to have made some places, but I was surprised to see myself go back to where I started, considering I’d made such improvements going longer, particularly in the first stint.

“I’m not really understanding why we weren’t able to maintain it. I was sliding everywhere. The car doesn’t feel terrible, but theirs [Red Bull/Ferrari] must be awesome for them to pull out the gaps that they are.”

Hamilton says that the championship isn’t lost yet, but made it clear that he’s worried about the team’s form.

“I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s that close, but we’re still in the fight. But unless we find a lot of time, it’s going to be hard to stay in the fight.”

Pastor Maldonado was fined €10,000 and given a reprimand by the FIA after his contact with Sergio Perez at Silverstone.

Both drivers had just made their pit stops when they collided as the Sauber tried to go around the outside of the Williams. Perez retired on the spot.

There has long been some tension between the two Latin American drivers, and Perez added to it in the aftermath of his retirement, saying of Maldonado “he has no respect for other drivers” and “he is just a very stupid driver.”

Maldonado insisted that he has simply lost control on cold tyres.

“I was on the inside of the corner, so the corner was mine at that moment,” he said. “He tried to close on me a bit, we were side-by-side, so close, and at that moment I lost the rear of my car and I just touched him.”

Asked about Perez’s comments, he said: “He’s always crying. In Monaco it was a normal incident. I think we need to value where it’s intentional and where it’s not. For sure it was clear it was not intentional.

“I’m looking forward to the next race and he can say whatever he wants. We are racing, you know, both of us were trying to do our best in the track. I was trying to defend a position, he was trying to gain the position, and this is racing you know. Otherwise everyone can race with the safety car, and it’s safer.”

Fernando Alonso says he has no regrets about the strategy Ferrari employed at Silverstone, despite losing the lead to Mark Webber in the closing laps and having to settle for second.

Alonso started on the hard tyre and saved the soft for the final stint, while most of his immediate rivals did the opposite.

“You have to put for the first 14 or 15 laps the soft tyres or in the last 14 or 15, so it was a similar timed race at the end over 52 laps,” said Alonso. “So I was not worried. Probably the start was the biggest worry because with the hard compound you know the start is a little bit worse.

“We tried to defend the position there. After that we were controlling the race more or less OK until the last stint, we were now quick enough and when Mark arrived I think he overtook very easy, and there was nothing we can do. I’m happy with the second place.

“Now obviously, 10 minutes after the race there is a strange feeling of losing victory. But it’s the same 18 points you get if you are third and you overtake the guy in second on the last lap and you are so happy, so it’s the same second place but different feelings in this ten minutes but I’m sure in one hour’s time I will appreciate it much more.”

Alonso was encouraged by the fact that the red car has been competitive at very different tracks recently.

“It was good in Valencia, the car, and here on a completely different track with a lot of high-speed corners the car seemed to perform very well. Also, a fantastic race from Felipe, finishing fourth, so I’m happy with the improvements in the car. I think still there is a last step to close with [Red Bull], maybe they are a little bit quicker in some conditions on some circuits, so we need to improve those.”

Alonso added that despite losing seven points to Webber, overall it had been a positive weekend for his title challenge.

“I think at the moment, as far as I’m leading, I’m more happy than worried. If Mark was leading the championship, I would be worried about losing another seven points, but at the moment, the weekend in general has been fantastic for us, because we left Valencia with maybe an emotional win, a lot of points in our pocket, compared to our rivals in the championship and we arrived at Silverstone, a completely different circuit, we didn’t know how the car was performing here.

“We had a very difficult qualifying for everybody yesterday and we survived that qualifying with pole position and today we also had a tricky race. We didn’t know what the weather was doing and I think the car performed well, we avoided any contact, any accidents that might happen at the start or in some battles.

“We are again bringing home more points than we probably expected, because when we arrived on Thursday, if someone had told us that we would leave on Sunday with 18 points again, I think we would have been very happy.”

Mark Webber put himself firmly in the fight for the 2012 World Championship fight by scoring his second win of the year at Silverstone, and he now has 116 points to the 129 of leader Fernando Alonso.

The Aussie chased down Alonso in the final stint, passing the Ferrari driver with four laps to go. He said the race the victory was not achieved as easily as may have appeared from the outside.

“It didn’t look like a spectacular race maybe between Fernando and I initially, but it was one,” said Webber. “A little strategy involved as well, particularly with ourselves, pacing the stints on the tyres, working out if it’s going to be two or three stops, and how the tyres would behave in the race.

“I thought in the first stint that Fernando was in very, very good shape to probably close the win out, but it came our way in the last stint and I am absolutely over the moon.”

Webber said it was not easy to judge how hard to push the tyres.

“[It was about] understanding the pace to do and to have the range to split the race evenly, for a two-stop Grand Prix. That was the main focus, to make sure that I could get to the stop lap which the guys were trying to predict me to hit, which pit stop lap they wanted me to hit, and get there with the best combination of pace and tyre life.

“Ultimately that is the best way to get to the chequered flag. Obviously you put a lot of faith in the pit wall. The guys are helping you to work out what level of pace you run at, and also balancing the car at the pit stops was important, working with the guys on the front wing. We made quite a big adjustment at the first stop after my first stint and then I was much happy with the car in the second and third stints.”

Webber said things have been going in his favour recently, but says it’s too early to start thinking too much about a title challenge.

“I’m not low on confidence at the moment. It’s going well. I think in Barcelona we didn’t help ourselves with the strategy in qualifying, to put ourselves outside Q3 by being too optimistic about the pace of the car for that Sunday afternoon. Overall, so far so good. We will enjoy today’s result, really soak it up. That’s what’s important.

“You have to remember how hard we work for these results and tomorrow morning, it’s Hockenheim. That’s what it has to be about. I think it’s a long, long season. I’m not getting too fired up about any particular championship positions at the moment. But what is for sure is that I have a nice haul of points to keep going with. I’m not sitting on 20 points trying to start my campaign from here. So it’s going well so far.”

Lewis Hamilton is bullish about his prospects for the British GP, despite starting only eighth.

Hamilton hopes that variable conditions will give him an opportunity to climb the order – and he sounds like he plans to go for it.

“It’s going to be an incredibly tough race, looking after these tyres, getting them working, staying out of trouble, avoiding standing water,” he said. “Of course our experience will come into play, but anything can happen tomorrow, and that’s really the exciting part of it. You have to go in with your heart and your head and get on with it.”

Hamilton admitted that it did get very difficult during qualifying.

“The visibility here is incredible, with the spray. I’m not sure why it’s more here than it is maybe in other places, but you can’t see a thing. Just on the out lap of Q3 I was behind quite a few cars there, and just on the out lap down towards Copse you don’t know whether to stay flat out or not, you can’t see the car for the life of you. Even 10m in front of you, 5m, you can’t see.”

Fernando Alonso earned the first pole in two years for both himself and Ferrari after a great performance in wet qualifying at Silverstone. It’s the first time a red car has started from top spot since Singapore 2010.

The Spaniard had some good fortune as in Q2 he just kept his car out of the barriers when he had a high speed spin. He was also only 16th when the session was stopped for an hour, before recovering the situation by scraping through to Q3 in ninth. On intermediates in the final session he was consistently fast, but in the end he only just pipped Mark Webber.

“We did some tests today in FP3 [in the dry] and the car felt quite good in the high-speed corners and we were quite happy with the balance,” said Alonso.

“But in wet conditions you never know. You need to be in the right place in the right moment, with the circuit in the best conditions possible when you do the lap and that lap has to be clean with not huge mistakes because a little bit here and there you always lose or you can improve a little bit because you never know exactly the conditions of the next corner when you arrive on a day like today.

“It can be a little bit drier than the lap before but we saw some drops of rain on the visors so it can be a little bit wetter so it’s a little bit of gambling what would be the grip at the next corner. To put the lap together was the only thing we had to do today and when you find yourself in pole position, for sure it’s a little bit surprising but, yeah, good to battle like this.”

Alonso admitted things had got a little fraught in the second session.

“I had a spin in Turn 13. It was a lot of aquaplaning there. We changed tyres, we went for the extreme tyres and there was a red flag. It was impossible to run, to be honest it was a good decision. And then also it was a good decision waiting for the time the circuit was in condition to run again. So, sometimes we criticise the decisions when we are not happy with them and today they were doing a really good job.

“The first priority is safety, the track was not in condition to continue qualifying and we wait the necessary time to do it and we’ve been at the limit for Q3, I think P9, so it was not easy. I had a Toro Rosso for two laps in front of me with no visibility, so the Q2 lap was a little bit like a blind lap: you do whatever time the Toro Rosso will do – more or less.”

Alonso conceded that his recovery from his spin was more due to luck than judgement.

“It was very big and you are not in control of the car. You need a bit of luck and we were lucky today. With that moment in Q2, with all the decisions that we make for the tyres that it was the right one – and lucky also that we put the lap together and lucky as well in the distance with Mark because there were some milliseconds. It can be first and second in a very easy way and today it was everything perfect for us. But the race is tomorrow, not today.”