Mark Webber insisted he was to blame for missing out a second place finish in the European Grand Prix in Valencia.Webber had been dicing for position with Fernando Alonso's Ferrari throughout the race before electing to make his final stop to swap onto the medium compound tyre before the Spaniard also pitted for the final time.
Alonso was able to go three laps longer on his final set of soft tyres before pitting himself and it proved to be the crucial decision as he rejoined ahead of the Australian in second.
Although he was then forced to back off in the closing laps due to a gearbox issue, Webber admitted he should have beaten Alonso to the flag to secure a 1-2 finish for Red Bull and blamed himself for only finishing on the bottom step of the podium.
“I think we should have finished second today,” he said. “It was a good race with Fernando, I think it was my best race of the year to be honest until the last pit stop. It was quite close with all three of us, obviously we were trying to go as fast as possible and manage the tyres at the same time.
“I was very happy with how the race was going until the last stop and it was my fault basically. I was worried about Fernando getting the undercut and it was not really known how the medium tyre would behave on the out lap, but it was a risk I decided to take. I lost out to Fernando, he drove a good race.
“We had a gearbox problem at the end, so we backed right off, but we had a massive gap to McLaren, so we could cruise to the end and look after the gearbox.”
Source: Crash.net
