Silverstone: Germany's Nico Rosberg won the British Grand Prix on a day which saw triple world champion Sebastian Vettel's of Red Bull break down while leading. Vettel's team-mate Mark Webber finished second while Ferrari's Fernando Alonso boosted his title hopes with an unexpected third place. Vettel has 132 points to the Spaniard's 111 after eight of 19 races, with the German's home race at the Nuerburgring next up in a week's time.

Mark Webber said after that race that nobody expected the race to unfold like this.
“What a day! I don’t think any of us expected it to unfold like this. The start was pretty bad, we have to look into that as we had had a good run of starts recently. Then I had contact with Grosjean and the wing was damaged; the boys did a great job in the stop when they changed it, After that we got into the race. I was praying for a safety car, but not for the reason they were coming, as you knew you could be next. When you have something like that, it’s Russian Roulette; when you see that many tyre issues for the fellow competitors then it’s never comforting." 


"I made the most of those safety cars – and today the strategy was one of the best we’ve done. I think it worked very, very well. I worked hard to manipulate the pace when I had to and then it was Nico and I left at the end. It would have been nice to have had a few more laps, but that’s how it was today. It was nearly a really special day, but it was still a nice day,” said Webber.


Meanwhile a disppointed Vettel said, “Obviously it’s quite disappointing to retire when we were only a few laps from the end. We had a gearbox issue, I think fifth gear broke and damaged the rest of the gearbox as well, so it was not possible to carry on. It’s a shame because we were in a good position and it’s a nice race to win here, so yeah I guess we have to come back next year and try again. It’s good that it’s only a short time until the next race.”


Team Principal Christian Horner said, “Obviously to get within 12 laps of winning the race and have a retirement due to a transmission issue is pretty painful, particularly at this venue, but Sebastian had done everything right today and it was a great shame. For Mark, after a difficult start and being hit at the first corner, he made a great recovery with a good nose change from the guys and his drive from then on was fantastic. He got his head down, charged his way back through the field and came pretty close to claiming the victory, but nonetheless second place was a great performance from him on a big weekend for the team.”