



Webber pushed back to 13th on grid after 'ride' penalty


Yeongam, South Korea

Bittersweet: Mark Webber after finishing third fastest qualifier before Sunday's Korean Grand Prix.

Bittersweet: Mark Webber after finishing third fastest qualifier before Sunday's Korean Grand Prix. Photo: Getty Images

Australians Mark Webber and Daniel Ricciardo will start alongside each other on the grid for Sunday's Korean Grand Prix.

Webber was third fastest in Saturday's final qualifying session but will start the race from 13th, having been penalised 10 grid places for accepting a ''ride'' back to the pits on Fernando Alonso's Ferrari at the Singapore Grand Prix. Toro Rosso's Ricciardo missed the final qualifying session and was 13th fastest - meaning he'll start in 12th.

Runaway formula one championship leader Sebastian Vettel grabbed pole position ahead of Mercedes' Lewis Hamilton. The German set a time of one minute, 37.202 seconds around the Yeongam circuit and did not even need to improve on his last flying lap, qualifying two-tenths of a second faster than Hamilton.

Webber pulled out of his final run in a bid to preserve his tyres ahead of Sunday's race. Lotus driver Romain Grosjean qualified fourth but will move to third, ahead of the Mercedes of Nico Rosberg, Ferrari duo Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa, Sauber pair Nico Huelkenberg and Esteban Guttierez, and Kimi Raikkonen in a Lotus.

Vettel claimed his sixth pole of the season and his third in a row. It will be the fifth time in succession that Vettel and Hamilton will line up on the front of the grid.

The McLarens of Sergio Perez and Jenson Button and the Force India pair Paul Di Resta and Adrian Sutil failed to make the top 10. Williams' Valtteri Bottas and Pastor Maldonado, the Caterham pair of Charles Pic and Giedo van der Garde, and Marussia's Jules Bianchi Max Chilton went out after the first qualifying.

Vettel has a 60-point lead over Alonso in the drivers' standings, with Hamilton a further 36 points back.

Earlier, McLaren team principal Martin Whitmarsh made it clear he thinks formula one is headed towards a crisis within 18 months unless costs are cut significantly.

Whitmarsh said the introduction of V6 turbo engines next year added even more costs to an already highly expensive sport, and more needed to be done to ensure the smaller independent teams could survive.

Along with the introduction of new engines and gearboxes, in-season testing will also be reintroduced next year, which alone is expected to cost teams $8.54 million to $10.68 million. Some of the smaller teams may skip one or more of the tests for cost reasons.

''We have made some mistakes with introducing the new powertrains; we didn't control the costs enough and the sport may well pay the price of that over the next 18 months,'' Whitmarsh said on Sky Sports. ''We are not at crisis yet, but we have to be careful we don't wait for that crisis.''

Previous efforts to reach a cost-control agreement through the Formula One Teams Association have failed because the bigger teams have been unwilling to handicap themselves for the good of the sport.

Red Bull was one of the teams that refused to make concessions, but principal Christian Horner still believed cost control was needed.

''It [FOTA] worked in the beginning, but it fell apart because self-interest was too strong,'' Horner said. ''So you have to have strong leadership now in that respect. The cost of competing in formula one at the moment is unimaginable and I can only imagine how it is at the other end of the pit lane.''

One potential solution to reduce costs for smaller teams is the introduction of customer cars, in which they could buy chassis and aerodynamic parts from the big teams in the same way they now buy engines.

''At the end of the day we are a business so if the regulations allow it then we would do it,'' Whitmarsh said.


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