Webber’s answer to Vettel’s endless technical failures: ‘He got my car’

DANIEL Ricciardo might have got Mark Webber’s seat at Red Bull, but Sebastian Vettel may have got his car, says Webber.

Daniel Ricciardo has become the sport’s hottest property.

DANIEL Ricciardo might have got Mark Webber’s seat at Red Bull, but Webber is starting to wonder if former teammate and arch rival Sebastian Vettel got his car.

Dogged by technical failures, bad luck and battling to adapt to the technical changes, the ­German champion is having a stinker while the flash young Australian can’t put a wheel wrong.

“Seb must have my car, looking at his reliability this year,” Webber said. “He’s had endless technical failures. It is very, very hard to explain how he’s had so many and he’s got penalties to come too.

“He’s got gearbox and engine penalties ahead so he is not out of the woods yet and that will be frustrating for him and it’s hard to get the momentum going.”

In 12 races this season, Vettel has managed to finish on the ­podium twice with two third-place finishes. His junior partner has joined the winning trio six times, including three times when he has taken the chequered flag.

Webber believes Ricciardo is a world champ in waiting. That multiple championships lie ahead. He’s not alone in that thinking. The young driver is being feted as the hottest property in the sport and during the week was presented the Trofeo Bandini, a prize named after Lorenzo Bandini and presented to the best F1 driver of the past 12 months. Vettel and Webber are previous winners.

The two Australians correspond regularly by text, but it appears the discussions are more about the context of the podium and nationality than the complications of the race.

“Walking out after a win to hear the national anthem was the biggest thing for me,” Webber told The Weekend Australian. “Those bloody trophies you could leave behind, but the anthem really meant something because I know it is very hard for us (Australians) to get to this level.

“There’s only four of us who have won at this level in 60 years, so it takes a bit and that’s what I touch on when I talk to him because there’s not many of us know how and what it took.” Webber retired last season, but at 38 he is enjoying watching his 25-year-old successor take every opportunity that’s presented him.

Ricciardo is at Monza this weekend where the long straits shouldn’t suit the struggling car, but he’s rung every 100th of a second out of the thing all season.

The Mercedes have it all over the Red Bull; when the leaders stumble, however, he has been the driver ready to swoop. The Australian is sitting third with a technical chance of winning the driver’s championship and in the time between Melbourne and now has taught everybody a lesson about underestimating what he can do.

“On paper, it should be our worst circuit,” Ricciardo said this week. “Not to talk it down too much, but their (Mercedes’) pace is really good. “I’ve been there to capitalise when maybe they have tripped over each other or had some issues. If we survive this one with a nice podium or top-five, we can then realistically have a crack at the title.”

Webber says that while regulation changes have frustrated the older drivers — he likens the shift to giving golf pros a different set of clubs — Ricciardo is young enough and good enough to adapt. “It looks like Kimi (Raikonnen) and Seb and a few of the older boys are not comfortable with the cars at the moment,” he said.

“They don’t feel it, it is a whole new category this year and that’s one of the reasons why I left. It turns out it might not have been too bad for me, but I wasn’t prepared to find that out with this big change coming in. That happens in F1 every two or three years. There’s a shift and as a driver you have to adapt.”

The whining from some of the older drivers has been heard above the engines in recent races, but Ricciardo can’t get the smile off his face. “There’s not a guy that when you start winning for first time is unhappy so he is in a really good place,” Webber said. “When you are older and you have three or four titles things get more frustrating and let’s hope that Daniel is in that place some day … then he can get pissed off with small things, but at the moment he isn’t going to because it is all upside.”

Webber admits he battled for motivation in his final season and might have stretched his career a lap too long.

“There might have been 12 months in it, but I still grabbed a few poles, last season was consistent … There’s so few guys who get to race at that level and to have over 200 grand prix starts and the amount of podiums and some wins — I got lucky sometimes.

“I look back and I’m still proud of being able to pull off what I did.

“I enjoyed it.”