Red Bull Racing: Who is worthy of replacing Mark Webber in the team for 2012? – Formula 1
Only 11 races remain in the 2011 Formula 1 season before the Formula 1 drivers and teams start to look for contracts for the next season or try to extend their current ones.
Few of the hottest seats in some of the top rank teams are going to be vacant for Formula 1 drivers to squeeze in for the 2012 season. Felipe Massa’s seat in Ferrari team is under observation and it will be interesting to see who is hired by the Scarlet
team.
However, the most important seat, as far as the prospects of the 2011 season suggest will be the Red Bull seat of Mark Webber.
Although Massa’s seat in Ferrari is more important due to its famous myth, yet Red Bull are becoming the hot topic in Formula 1 world these days.
Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel has been uncatchable in his RB7 winning six out of the first eight races of the 2011 season, and an almost same similar car is available to Webber which provokes the media to talk about the future of Aussie’s seat more than that
of Ferrari.
At the start of the 2011 season, Vettel’s contract was extended along with 50 other personnel in the Red Bull team but Mark Webber’s future was not discussed.
It was said that Webber’s future in Red Bull will purely depend on his performance in the 2011 season. The Aussie is doing all that he could to maintain the level of his game so that when the time comes, Red Bull do not leave him.
But it turns out that the fortune fairy is not very kind on Webber as the Aussie always develops some sort of problem in his car while Vettel sails smooth without any hindrances.
The biggest contender to take Webber’s place in Red Bull is McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton.
In the Valencia Grand Prix, Webber was trying hard to keep his head high in the team and prove a point to them. Meanwhile, as the Aussie was busy in the race, Hamilton had a crash and was forced to retire from the race early after which the Brit visited
the Red Bull camp for a while.
Hamilton and Horner denied any future talks but it is strongly speculated that there might be some future talks between them.
The Brit is also not happy with his team who have failed to produce a car better than Vettel. Therefore, it is safe to assume that it is not yet over as far as the Hamilton-Vettel combination talks in Red Bull team are concerned.
Apart from Hamilton, Red Bull hired Vettel from the Toro Rosso team referred to as Red Bull’s sister team and potentially someone from Jaime Alguersuari or Sebastien Buemi might get their hands on the Red Bull car for the 2012 season.
As for the recent developments in the Red Bull team are concerned, Webber has started to land on podium almost at every race thereby making it hard for the Milton Keynes-based team to let the Aussie go.
Nevertheless, apart from the future concerns in Formula 1, Webber might also look at the brighter side of the things as he is third driver in the 2011 championship list with a 77-point deficit, and if there is any better time for Webber to make his mark,
it is right now. Let’s see how he fares at the upcoming British Grand Prix.
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