Korean GP: Mark Webber compromised qualifying pace for penalty

The Australian will drop 10 places on the grid after being given his third reprimand of the year for his 'taxi ride' incident in Singapore.

Webber qualified in third place behind Sebastian Vettel and Lewis Hamilton, but will start from 13th position.

The Red Bull driver said his qualifying pace could have been stronger had he not prepared his car to climb through the field on Sunday.

"We had to keep an eye on the race, with the ratios and all those things," said Webber. "You try to have a more balanced view of the weekend as we always knew we would be out of position. I can't qualify on pole 10 places further back than pole.

"You would like to have your cake and eat it and have all the downforce on the car and have super, super top speed but that is not possible.

"We had to take a bit of pace out of the car. I'm pretty happy, I could be two positions further up and be 11th rather than 13th, but it was a pretty tight qualifying.

"We got it right, and the race will be well and truly out of position, but we will try and come back through."

Webber said his car had taken a step forward compared to Friday.

"I think we certainly improved the car in areas we wanted to focus on," he said. "The conditions were a bit different today, we had to keep an eye on that.

"The long runs in practice two won't be too relevant in the race, but we have our ducks lined up and know what we need to work on."

SPEED TRAP FIGURES

The main speed trap is located 150 metres before Turn 3 on the longest straight on the track.

Mark Webber was the third fastest, with a top speed 3.2km/h faster than Vettel thanks to running less wing to make it easier to overtake from his relatively lowly grid position.

 1. Fernando Alonso     320km/h
 2. Felipe Massa        319.4km/h
 3. Mark Webber         319.0km/h
 4. Sergio Perez        318.8km/h
 5. Esteban Gutierrez   317.7km/h
 6. Nico Hulkenberg     317.6km/h
 7. Lewis Hamilton      317.5km/h
 8. Jean-Eric Vergne    317.4km/h
 9. Adrian Sutil        317.2km/h
10. Paul di Resta       317.0km/h
11. Daniel Ricciardo    316.5km/h
12. Sebastian Vettel    315.8km/h
13. Nico Rosberg        315.6km/h
14. Jenson Button       314.4km/h
15. Pastor Maldonado    313.4km/h
16. Valtteri Bottas     313.3km/h
17. Max Chilton         312.3km/h
18. Jules Bianchi       312.1km/h
19. Giedo van der Garde 310.7km/h
20. Charles Pic         310.4km/h
21. Kimi Raikkonen      310.3km/h
22. Romain Grosjean     310.2km/h