Early Exit for Webber in Official Qualifying

Despite showing huge promise in the weekend’s three practice sessions when he featured in the top six throughout, official qualifying turned out to be a major disappointment for Australian Mark Webber and his partisan home crowd when he suffered what appeared to be a front brake failure on his first timed lap in qualifying two.

The failure pitched him into the gravel traps and out of contention for the remainder of the qualifying which means Webber will start tomorrow’s 58-lap race in a lowly 15^thposition.

Electing to run the harder “prime” tyre in the first qualifying session in order to save his softer tyres for the race, Webber made the first cut in 15^thposition with his first timed lap of 1min 26.914s after his second run was compromised by Timo Glock exiting the pit lane.

“We’re not sure yet what caused the problem,” said Webber on his return to the Red Bull Racing garage after walking back from turn six where the failure happened. “It isn't a brake wear problem but rather something structual but exactly what caused it, we don't know just yet.

“I was pleased to have got through to quali two because we had made it hard for ourselves by electing to run the first session on the harder tyres. My second timed run was always going to be a bit tense and I lost time to Glock but my first timed lap was just enough to see me through to Q2.

“It's going to be an interesting race tomorrow. Melbourne is notoriously hard to overtake on but we’ll be fighting very hard to get a point if we can.”