F1: Webber marks his card

There was something about qualifying for the Valencia European Grand Prix that upset Mark Webber. As his team mate Vettel took of his helmet and, as holder of pole position, behaved gregariously, Webber in second kept his helmet on, strode past Vettel and weighed in. During the press conference - in a different format with the drivers slouching in chairs instead of sitting upright at a table - he was clearly very out of sorts. His eyes glistened as if he was about to cry. Something was very, very wrong but with his self-control knob turned to 11, he spoke calmly and said all the right things, sticking strictly to the script.

Come race day, he was still steaming. He didn't want to talk on the grid. Starting from the dirty side - which due to sea-spray can be less forgiving than at many other tracks - he knew he had to get the power down and drive as hard as he could if he was to be battling with Vettel through the crucial second and third corners. But he couldn't get sufficient traction and Hamilton from third came inside - Webber's response was a hard dive towards Hamilton who simply kept his foot down. Webber watched Hamilton make a bid for the inside line and saw Vettel and Hamilton touch, breaking Hamilton's front wing. From there, Webber went rapidly backwards, hung out to dry on corner after corner as the pack swarmed around him. Within half a lap, his second place had been transformed into fifth and he was still losing places.

With the race looking thoroughly spoiled, Webber's team decided that the best thing to do, while the pack was still more or less together, was to bring him in for his mandatory pit stop, switch from the soft tyres to the hard that would run all race. He would come out, it appeared, ahead of the new teams and so as the mid-field and leaders stopped, he would inherit places without having to race for them. It was a good idea but it went horribly wrong when the front-left wheel got stuck. He came out and set about creating a storming pace.An extra three seconds in the pit had put Webber behind Lotus who, in their 500th Grand Prix were hoping for great things and a lot of TV coverage. What they did not want was to be in the pictures of a potentially horrendous accident.

Kovalainen was delighted with his race: he was half-a second a lap faster than the other two new teams and expecting to cruise up to the mid-field cars. And he was happy to see Webber come up behind: at last he could have some proper racing with someone he had been dicing with last year. Webber came up behind the Lotus which held the middle line through a 250kph corner. Webber jinked left, right, left and right - unsighted for the braking point. Kovalainen braked and Webber hit his right rear wheel. Webber's front wing came off instantly, the nose of the car rose, the back pressed down by the still-intact rear wing. Ripping the back wing of Kovalainen's Lotus, Webber's car flipped, landing upside down. It bounced, and, parts flying, landed hard in the run-off area heading into the tyre barriers at high speed.

Webber was livid. But incredibly unhurt. He said Kovalainen braked 80 metres before the braking point "a long, long way before" but that's not how it appears from Webber's in-car footage.

Webber walked unaided to the medical car and back to the Red Bull motorhome from the medical centre, one of the luckiest man in motor racing and a testimony to the safety that has been built into cars.