Runner-up Webber feels like a winner

FORMULA ONE BELGIAN GRAND PRIX:LEWIS HAMILTON regained control of the battle for the Formula One drivers' championship with victory at the Belgian Grand Prix yesterday but the driver walking away from a soggy Spa circuit with the biggest sense of achievement may well be title rival Mark Webber, the Red Bull Racing driver climbing to second after a disastrous start.

Webber was handed a sequence of presents in the race after he had seen his grid advantage wiped out after a sluggish start blamed on the car’s anti-stall device. By the La Source hairpin, he was down in seventh and struggling.

Further down the hill Hamilton was blasting through the left-right flick of Eau Rouge, with team-mate Jenson Button, Renault’s Robert Kubica and a hard-charging Sebastian Vettel in close attendance. It was the latter two who would shape the opening phase of the race.

With Hamilton stretching out his lead, Button was left to cling onto second, the defending champion suffering with a damaged front wing. Unable to push on he soon found himself under threat from Vettel, the German now looking like Red Bull Racing’s best bet for a podium as Webber found himself lodged behind an immovable Kubica.

But then, on lap 15, Webber received the first of his afternoon presents – from his own team-mate, Vettel, colliding with Button as he tried to pass the McLaren driver under braking for the Bus Stop chicane.

“I tried to out-brake him on the outside but I lost the car under braking on the bump and then I couldn’t really control it and crashed into him,” Vettel said of the incident that moments later caused Button to retire from the race.

The German was later handed a race-compromising drive-through penalty for causing the collision but that was little consolation to the retired Button later who admitted that the incident had seriously damaged his chances of defending his world title. “All I felt was a big bang in the sidepod,” Button said. “It ripped the radiator out I think and I lost drive completely. I don’t know what he was doing really. It’s a massive blow – a massive blow. It hurts quite a bit.”

That incident vaulted Webber to third, still behind Kubica and the dominant Hamilton and the Australian next looked to jump the Renault in the pitstops. When that gambit failed as Renault made a textbook stop, it looked like the championship leader would have to settle for the podium’s lowest step.

That would have been reward enough after such a poor start but when the rain began to fall in the closing stages, Kubica decided Webber deserved a more glittering prize. As the rain worsened, the field streamed toward the pits for intermediate tyres. Hamilton, Kubica and Webber trundled in line astern and while Hamilton got away cleanly to hold his lead, Kubica locked up as he approached his pit box, almost taking out several of his mechanics.

It meant that Webber exited the pit lane in second place, and despite a late safety car period in the closing stages after Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso crashed out, the Australian held on to take 18 points, reducing the damage caused by Hamilton’s win to just seven points.

“I’m happy with second,” he said. “To have the top three qualifiers here, after a race like today, you’d normally never ever get that. It’s very, very easy to come away with nothing; we got some good points as we go to Monza.”

The Australian, too, had some advice for his own team as the championship enters its final third, saying the time is rapidly coming when Red Bull will have to throw its full weight behind his championship title – at the expense of team-mate Vettel.