Christian Horner expecting some ‘progress’ regarding Mark Webber’s future – Formula 1 news
Red Bull Racing team principal Christian Horner has said that he is expecting some progress regarding Mark Webber’s future at the team during the month-long summer break of the 2011 Formula 1 season.
Red Bull had a pretty strong weekend at the Hungarian Grand Prix as Sebastian Vettel finished in 2nd place while Mark Webber scored the 5th place giving the team yet another strong double point finish.
“We're talking about Mark for next year, and I'm expecting him to be here. He is a popular member of the team. We've always agreed that later in the summer we would sit down and talk. Mark and I have a very good relationship, and conversations with Mark
- as you all know - tend to be fairly straightforward,” he said.
Webber is yet to score a victory this year though keeping in mind that he has scored the pole position on 3 occasions in 11 races this year.
RBR have a perfect pole position scoring record this year and it seems that there is no reason of getting rid of the Australian driver. The team has informally announced that they will keep him for another year for sure but added that an official agreement
is yet to be signed.
Other than that, Horner also played down Helmut Marko’s statement regarding Mark Webber’s retirement as the team’s motorsport advisor stated that the Australian driver would retire after the 2012 season after which he would need to be replaced with a driver
like Daniel Ricciardo.
“I think Helmut was probably focusing more on Ricciardo, and these things can obviously get lost in translation. Mark could have another two, three or four years in F1. That's down to him because he is still very competitive, very hungry,” said Horner.
Nevertheless, Webber himself also stated that he is willing to stay in the sport until he has a competitive car and that he is still as determined as he used to be with the Red Bull Racing team.
It seems that his deal with the team is pretty much confirmed but his future after the 2012 Formula 1 season is still unclear.
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