• Malaysian Grand Prix - Qualifying

Webber annoyed with timing error

ESPN Staff
March 23, 2013 « Rain helped Ferrari - Massa | Raikkonen hit with three-place grid penalty »
Mark Webber qualified fifth but was the first man to take the chequered flag in Q3 © Getty Images
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Mark Webber was left annoyed after a timing error hampered his qualifying performance ahead of the Malaysian Grand Prix.

While team-mate Sebastian Vettel took pole position, Webber will start fifth after setting a time that was 2.6s slower than Vettel's best. Webber admitted his approach to the session wasn't quite right but revealed that he had thought he had more time to back off and start a final flying lap when he actually was the first car to take the chequered flag.

"To do the absolutely maximum lap time probably another set of inters was the right thing to do but it wasn't completely clear," Webber said. "I was saving my inters for that last run at the end but basically the information I had for when the session was going to finish was a little bit different to what I thought and in the end I got the flag. I wasn't expecting the flag so it's a double whammy because obviously the track's ramping in a lot."

Webber also clarified: "It was actually how many laps I had to go, so that was the information that I was struggling with."

While Webber didn't feel he couldn't have beaten his team-mate's time he did think he could have got a spot on the front row but said the way form was changing is perplexing.

"I think we could certainly have laid down a stronger time; if you look at a subbed prime against new prime, toe to toe on the same conditions I was probably going to struggle to get Seb but I think that we could have certainly done a stronger lap time. There's no question about it, the track was ramping up quickly and ... timing ... Malaysia; that's how it can be.

"It's very tricky and the track can change very fast. You look at someone like Adrian [Sutil] who has been very fast on the drys and he's good in the wet as well and then he can't do a time on the inters, so it's a bizarre situation that's going on, we don't really know why it's like that."

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