• Italian Grand Prix

Tyre degradation caused Webber spin

Mark Webber spun off and retired two laps from the end of the race © Sutton Images

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• Race:
• Italian Grand Prix

• Drivers:
• Mark Webber

• Teams:
• Red Bull

Mark Webber's spin towards the end of the Italian Grand Prix was simply caused by tyre degradation and team principal Christian Horner said there was no choice but to retire with the resulting flatspots on the tyre.

Webber was running in seventh when he spun coming out of Ascari, dropping several places and ruining his tyres. He was trying to make a one stop strategy work after taking on used hard tyres on lap 21, but was forced to retire two laps from the end.

"I think he just ran out of tyres from about lap 36 onwards," Horner said. "His slip on the tyres started to increase quite significantly and he just ran out of tyres at the end of the day and lost it on the exit of Ascari. The flat spots that resulted put such a heavy vibration into the car that we had no choice but to retire the car."

Webber explained that he was trying to keep the two-stopping Nico Rosberg behind him at the time.

"I was trying to push and I knew Nico was coming with some pretty fresh tyres. I didn't want to lose any time with Michael so I was letting him go and I was a bit of a passenger trying to push as hard as I could. We lost radio contact too at some point so it was difficult to talk to the team. All in all a very difficult day for us and we really struggled to get the most out of it after a difficult qualifying and our start was probably our worst since Melbourne. We certainly ticked all the boxes in terms of not doing the job we were capable of, but that's motorsport."

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.