4 2012 MONACO GP

MONTE CARLO RED BULL RB8 1ST

Starting from pole may have been more than half the battle at Monaco, but Webber was aware that every one of the 78 laps would be fraught with potential difficulties, particularly when his team-mate moved into the lead with a different strategy just before half distance, and then it started to drizzle with 10 laps remaining.

“This was probably one of my strongest Saturdays ever in F1,” recalls Webber, who inherited pole after timesheet-topper Michael Schumacher was bumped to sixth for a clash at the previous race. “Seb [Vettel] qualified ninth; I was on pole. Adrian Newey said, ‘Thanks, mate. She’s probably not a pole car today, but you put it up there.’ That was the easy bit. The race was really stressful.

“It’s all about strategy, stopping at the right time, covering everyone off and then resetting. We had a small KERS thing going on, which was playing havoc with the front brake temperatures. I had to run the brake balance a long way forward, which gave me a lot of front locking and a stressful middle part of the GP, particularly when Seb hadn’t stopped and I was making sure he didn’t build a big enough gap to get in and out of the pits ahead of me.

“And then it starts to rain. I can see the film on the tyres and I’m saying, ‘It’s just drizzle. Stay calm.’ But that’s a very nasty sting in the tail. The guys that are second [Nico Rosberg – Mercedes] and third [Fernando Alonso – Ferrari]; they want it to rain. There’s one guy who doesn’t want it to rain – that’s me. I’m the first to arrive at the corners and discover the changing grip levels. It hadn’t rained all week and you just never knew what to expect on the streets. I was very, very relieved when that was all over.”

Webber held on to win by 0.643s on a day when team-mate Vettel finished fourth.