Red Bull's Mark Webber raced in Formula 1 with a broken shoulder
Red Bull driver Mark Webber has revealed in his recently published book, “Up Front: A Season to Remember”, that he raced with a broker shoulder in the last four races of this year’s Formula One season.
Webber refuses to blame the injury, sustained in a mountain biking accident, for his failure to win the F1 title this year, but it may indeed have played some part in providing a chance for Fernando Alonso and Sebastian Vettel to overtake Webber and turn the championship into a duel between themselves. It was Vettel who eventually won the championship, deferring Webber’s dreams of becoming the first Australian to win the F1 title since 1980.
When Webber sustained the injury after the Singapore Grand Prix, he was leading the title race by 11 points. After the accident, he required painkiller injections in his right shoulder for the Japanese and Korean Grands Prix.
Webber didn’t inform his Red Bull team principal Christian Horner about the injury, although he did tell his trainer Roger Cleary and F1 senior medic Gary Hartstein, who is the executive medical officer of Formula One.
The F1 driver says that the weather in Japan greatly helped him heal from his injury and enabled him to race in Suzuka for the Japanese Grand Prix. But he was unable to complete the race in South Korea, where he crashed his car and lost all chances of winning the title.
Webber’s injury provided an easy opportunity for his archrival Alonso to overtake him on the point’s table. His injury also benefited teammate Vettel, who continued his consistent performance and thrashed all the other drivers mercilessly in the final race of the event at Abu Dhabi to win his first Formula One world championship title.
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