Webber going 'head on' to win title

Mark Webber says he is determined to improve his performance during the 2011 season after missing out on the title last year

The Australian led the championship for much of the second half of the season, but ended up finishing in third position behind Red Bull team-mate Sebastian Vettel and Ferrari's Fernando Alonso.

But Webber is adamant that he will have another chance to fight for the title this season, and the Red Bull racer is eager to make the most of it.

"I have a great opportunity and a great team of people around me to focus and go out there and try and improve on what I did last year," Webber told reporters at Valencia following the launch of the new RB7 car.

"There are a whole load of things I did right last year, but still some very proud moments. We are not sure how the results will be initially because there are some good opposition but we are very optimistic that the car will be very, very good and the guys have done another good job with that.

"Head on mate, and going to do the best job I can. I am going to start the season better than I did last year as well. I didn't start season as good but 80 percent of season in front was good so we will try and improve a little bit on those things and go for it."

The Australian has no doubts that Red Bull will be a force to be reckon with once more, although he concedes the battle at the front will be very intense again.

"We didn't achieve what we achieved last year because we didn't know what we were doing," Webber said. "I enjoy racing a lot more than testing. The team worked incredibly well, there are a lot of firsts for everything, but motivation is not a problem for any of us to go into this campaign.

"It is enjoyable to upset other people's plans and that is what competition is about. We have to try and do it again but we know we have a huge, huge battle on our hands and we know we have the people and the continuity to go and fight for this very strongly.

He added: "I enjoy the monitor coming down on the cockpit and the race weekends are very enjoyable, but what is interesting and fascinating to having been in F1 for quite a long time now, is seeing a new car develop and thrown together in such a short period of time with such precision so to go develop the car and work hard over the next few weeks.

"That is the thing that is exciting to prepare ourselves as much as we can for the first race. We will be constantly moving - pushing very, very aggressively in terms of reliability and performance and understanding different situations."