Red Bull certain Mark Webber will shrug off recent calamities

The Australian has endured a tough few weeks in Formula 1, starting with Sebastian Vettel ignoring team orders to beat him in Malaysia.

Webber's problems continued in China. His car was not fuelled properly for qualifying, and he had an incident-packed race on Sunday that included a collision with Jean-Eric Vergne and a wheel falling off.

The clash with Vergne earned Webber a grid penalty for this weekend's Bahrain Grand Prix, but Red Bull team principal Christian Horner reckons Webber will have little trouble bouncing back from his recent troubles.

"He will be fine," explained Horner. "He is a tough competitor, and he was driving very well.

"He was coming back up through the field, after we made some big changes overnight [on Saturday] to gear ratios and downforce levels and set-up to assist him to do that.

"The strategy was working very well for him and he was in the thick of it.

"The contact was unfortunate, but then to have to retire the car was even more unfortunate.

"Our objective is always to get both cars to the finish as high as we can."

Webber's troubled time in China, coming so soon after the 'Multi 21' team orders controversy, prompted wild conspiracy theories that Red Bull was trying to deliberately hamper the Australian.

These were strongly denied by Horner after the race.