Abu Dhabi: Mark Webber beat Red Bull teammate Sebastian Vettel's time right at the end of qualifying Saturday to take pole position for the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.
The veteran Australian is competing in his final season in Formula One and still looking for his first win of 2013. He will look to end Vettel's run of six straight race wins on Sunday. The 37-year-old Webber got his second pole from the past three races and 13th of his career. "Good day and it puts in a good position for tomorrow," said Webber, who clocked 1 minute, 39.957 seconds. Vettel timed 1:40.075.
Mark Webber said, “This weekend so far has gone pretty smoothly for us. It’s not the easiest venue, because of the changing temperatures. We run in the afternoon and then at night, so you have to be on top of the changing conditions as a driver and also from an engineering perspective. It wasn’t the most electric start to Q1 or Q2, but we made changes to the car as the session went on and I got more comfortable. I knew I had to work on certain sections of the track which Sebastian had already been doing a good job on, so I had to try and match him as well as continuing to keep the areas where I was doing a good job too, so overall I’m happy with the pole. We’re really looking forward to the race tomorrow.”
Meanwhile Vettel said that it was a great result for the team. “At the start of qualifying I think Mercedes looked very strong with both Nico and Lewis; Mark and myself weren’t hanging about, but they were very quick. In Q3 we seemed to be able to find a little bit of extra time. Mark did a very good lap, so congratulations to him. I should have done a little bit better, but I don’t know if it would have been enough, Mark deserves to be on pole today; it was a good lap with no mistakes. On top of that, it’s a great result for the team and we should have a strong result tomorrow,” said Vettel.
