Formula One news

Red Bull strikes gold

The Red Bull team enjoyed by far its best race of the season at the Nurburgring this afternoon, with Mark Webber taking his first podium for the team and David Coulthard picking up some valuable points in fifth after starting way down in 20th. On a day where conditions played such a big part, the Red Bull team capitalised and put the optimum strategy together for both its drivers to collect a maximum amount of points - 10, more than the team has made all season. The result puts the team sixth ahead of Toyota in the constructors' championship with 16 points.

David Coulthard said: "I'm very happy for the team. It's obviously been a difficult start to the year with some reliability issues, but nonetheless to show the pace we did in this race was good and the calls we made on strategy were a credit to the team; the pit stops were great. After such a bad qualifying, it was only ever going to be a change of conditions like these that was going to give us a chance to move forward and we ended with a podium and a fifth place for me."

Mark Webber commented: "This is a podium I can enjoy on a special day for us. The team deserves it after all the effort that has taken place behind the scenes. It's great to get some points on the board, especially as David finished fifth as well. I didn't have a good start and was on the back foot, the rain certainly came much earlier than we expected. We had to make a quick decision and went for the intermediates, but as the rain got much worse we were aquaplaning really badly. The FIA took the right decisions in bringing out the Safety Car and then suspending the race. I did a long run on the grooved tyres, which helped me pull away from the guys behind, even if I struggled a bit in the middle stint with the rears. I have to say I wasn't too disappointed to see Kimi retire. Towards the end I began to think I had it in the bag, but I thought 'oh god' when I saw the rain coming again. In the final part I had massive vibration from the rear tyres and that's why Alex got so close."

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