‘No Hard Feelings’ says Manning after losing win

Nevertheless, he is philosophical about the incident. 'There are no hard feelings,' said the resident of Harrogate, England at the post race press conference.

'I gambled the wrong way on set up - the track dried up earlier than I had been hoping for. The car got a lot faster as it dried.'

The track started out so sodden, in fact, that the start was put back by 20 minutes. It rained no more during the race, but took virtually the whole duration of the event to dry off.

'I went in to the corner a lot tighter,' said Manning of the incident at Club corner.

'The car was handling poorly at that stage,' he added, explaining how Webber could get alongside.

Webber got alongside Manning on the first part of the turn, but the Englishman held the inside for the second part. However, his dry set up meant that the car slewed across the track leaving Webber no room. The cars touched, but managed to recover, and Webber was able to take the lead.

The Australian had an intermediate wet/dry set up on his Lola, which acted ideally in the middle stages of the race. However, Manning's car started to perform very well as the track dried off, and he set fastest lap during the late-race charge that saw him close to within less than a second from Webber.

The defeat meant Manning failed to score a hat trick of flagship Grand Prix support races - Manning won the British Grand Prix F3 races in 1996 and 1998.