Wheel my bad luck ever end?

MARK WEBBER was left cursing his bad luck after the wheels literally fell off his Red Bull.

The Aussie was already feeling disgruntled after his qualifying session for yesterday’s race in China was wrecked by a faulty fuel rig, meaning he started from the pit lane.
But that was insignificant, as the rear right wheel slipped off his car on lap 17 to bring a premature end to his race.
And to make matters worse, he has now been slapped with a three-place grid penalty for next Sunday’s race in Bahrain for crashing into Toro Rosso’s Jean-Eric Vergne on the previous lap.
Webber groaned: “It’s disappointing. I was coming from a reasonable distance behind, Jean-Eric was really wide.
“But when we came close to the apex he wanted to hit it, which he is entitled to do, but by then I was committed to the inside and the incident happened.
“It wasn’t the end of the world as we were only a couple of laps off stopping for tyres anyway.
“The guys thought the tyre was fixed when we left the stop, but it came off on the out lap.
“We have had a few problems this weekend; I think we could have done something from our start position, but it wasn’t meant to be.”

DEAD RUBBER ... Mark Webber's horror moment

Webber’s DNF capped another miserable week for the 36-year-old, who has openly admitted he is considering his future.
In Malaysia he was left seething after his teammate Sebastian Vettel broke team orders to overtake him and win the race.
The German then had another pop at Webber on Thursday by suggesting he did it as some kind of payback for previous clashes.
But Webber has been tipped to bounce-back from his latest hard luck by his team boss, Christian Horner.

BACK IN THE SADDLE ... Mark Webber is taken away

And Horner also basted ridiculous suggestions that Webber was the victim of underhand tactics.
He added: “What complete rubbish! Forget conspiracy theories. We are all about trying to get two cars to finish as high as we can.
“Anyone who thinks there is a conspiracy here against one or either drivers does not know what they are looking at.
“Mark knows exactly what happened. That’s it. Zero else. There is no conspiracy.
“It’s been a tricky weekend for us and an incident in the race did not help that either.
“Until we get the components back we will not know what happened with the wheel but Mark will be fine.
“He is a tough competitor who was trying to do well and was coming through the field.”

LOVELY BUBBLY ... Fernando Alonso celebrates his win

In an action-packed race, Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso kept clear of trouble to win his first race of the season.
Lotus’ Kimi Raikkonen was in second while Lewis Hamilton was third in his Mercedes.
It was the Brit’s second podium of the season and he is now in fourth place in the drivers’ championship, 12 points behind the current leader Vettel.
He is now hoping for an improved performance in Bahrain this Sunday after being stunned by the pace of the Ferrari and Lotus.
He said: “It was a good race for me and I am quite happy with third even though I would have loved to have won.
“[Alonso and Raikkonen] were both a little too fast for us, I was trying to apply a bit of pressure to Kimi at the end but my tyres were shot.
“I’m not sure where we’re losing out — just the overall pace was not there. We have to bring some more updates and keep on improving.”
Hamilton held off a late surge from Vettel while Jenson Button was in fifth place in his McLaren.
Button added: “I’m very happy to have finished fifth. The race was always going to be tricky because we weren’t quick enough to adopt the same strategy as the others.”