Webber on the other hand, was absolutely shafted by a brain EXPLOSION from Sutil in Bahrain, Kovalainen forgeting where to brake in Melbourne and the half points in Malaysia. I am not even including Kimi’s brain fart in qualy at Silverstone as I am not sure that cost Webber points.

Even with just ‘solid’ finishes in melbourne, Bahrain and Malaysia and Mark is pretty much equal on points with Button.

Food for thought.

Have I missed something?

We seem to be agreeing.

I too have seen internet conjecture with people suggesting that Webber’s car has a ‘dry’ weight in excess of 605kg. Personally I agree strongly with Thyraeus comment: “The only certainty is no serious F1 car would turn up weighing more than minimum weight + fuel”.

One simple piece of ‘evidence’ I can give you to support this is to look at how competitive Webber has been in the first 2 sessions of qualifying Q1 and Q2. With all the cars running as close to their dry weight in these two sessions as possible, you would expect Webber to be at a definite disadvantage if he was running a higher dry weight than his competitors. Though the fact is these two sessions have been Mark’s most competitive relative to his rivals (notably Vettel), more so than Q3, where the penalty of running a heavier dry weight would be less of a disadvantage.

With regard to Webber pitting before Vettel last round, I believe Webber’s pits stop was a lap early than he was fueled for. The reason RBR appear to have made this call was that Webber had significant rear tyre degradation (check the footage of his car whilst he served his drive through), and RBR decided to stop him early in order to ensure he maintained track position over Button after his pit stop, who was actually lapping quite fast at that stage. In support of this conjecture, note that although Webber stopped two laps before Vettel at the first stops and had a slighter shorter fill time, Webber ran a second stint that was a lap longer than Vettel’s, ie. Webber still had fuel in this car at the first stop.

One final point that demonstrates that Webber doesn’t run a dry weight over 605kg is the Silverstone first stint, where Vettel had a car that weighed 666.5 kg, weighing 7kg more than Webber’s car with 659.5kg, yet Vettel only ran one lap longer. This means that if Webber was running his car over the dry weight even by as little as 5kg, he would’ve had to magically saved 4 laps worth over fuel over a 19 lap stint to achieve this result, obviously impossible.

What is the current engine situation of both RBR and Brawn. If I remember correctly, I think RBR have used more Renault engines that Brawn has used Merc engines.

Isn’t there a chance that RBR might run out of new engines sooner than Brawn??

Thanks for your post. I had considered that strategy (eg traffic) would have affected when the Red Bull drivers pitted, as well as being able to save fuel while in traffic, but that doesn’t explain Horner’s comments. It seems like the only explanation is that Horner was just plain wrong. Strikes me as a pretty unsatisfying explanation, but I guess it’ll have to do.