MPH: Mark Hughes on...

Mark Webber's opening-lap spin in the wet of the British Grand Prix came at an unfortunate moment for him. Not only had his new contract with Red Bull just been announced but, having qualified the RB4 on the front row for the first time, he'd ensured he was well and truly under the spotlight.

Within seconds he was at the back of the field, facing the wrong way, providing ammunition for those who believe he makes too many mistakes and cannot handle the spotlight's attention.

Maybe so, but let's get things in perspective. It was the first major race error he's made this year. Aside from being assaulted out on the first lap of the season, in all the other races he's got what was probably the maximum result possible from the car. He's invariably headed the charge behind the big three teams, usually fighting it out with Alonso's Renault and Trulli's Toyota.

There was a spin on the treacherous surface of Montreal when the throw of the safety car dice had left him out of the points anyway. Then there was a half-spin on an out-lap in France, temporarily losing him a place but having no impact on the result. These are incidents typical of any driver in the cut and thrust of the very tight upper midfield; statistically, he has not made as many errors this year as Alonso, for example.

YET ANOTHER 'WHAT IF'

Consider also that the Silverstone spin was not entirely of his making. Blinded by the spray from Raikkonen's Ferrari, he'd changed up to fourth when his right-rear tyre was on the white line of Chapel and it was this that spun him out. However, Red Bull's engineers could see clearly through the rest of the race that the wet-weather setting of the upshift software was not performing as it should. With semi-auto shifts, drivers no longer have any way of making their upshifts 'softer' to suit slippery conditions.

In the days of manual shifts, they could make a slower change and use more clutch slip to keep from overloading the rear tyres. Now all they can do is pull the lever. So teams have developed software that replicates the soft shift for wet conditions. However, with fewer sensors and the reduced electronic sophistication demanded by this year's rules, they have had to reconfigure such systems. That on the Red Bull was simply giving too vicious an upchange - nothing more than an inconvenience most of the time, but with a rear wheel on a white line the sudden torque transfer was enough to overwhelm the tyre and round he went.

Webber chose not to talk about it, didn't want to be seen as making excuses. It was the team that made public the issue. Later there were a couple more spins, but these were more to do with trying to drive in standing water on intermediate tyres that were worn almost to slicks - the same problem faced by the two Ferrari drivers, with similar results. Before his tyres were worn, as Webber recovered from the first-lap incident he'd gone through the lower half of the field like a knife through butter and was vying with Hamilton and Raikkonen as the fastest man on track.

It was yet another 'what if' in Webber's career, much like that of Fuji last year when he was taken out under the safety car by Sebastian Vettel when in a strong second place and looking forward to trying an attack on Lewis Hamilton's lead. Or when, in his Williams, he was matching Alonso and Raikkonen at the front of Monaco '06, matching their every move and fuelled to run longer to the stops. That time it was a lack of blue flags that cost him his chance of a victory and a mechanical failure that lost him a podium.

His speed is still underrated despite his relentlessly brilliant qualifying performances. It's generally forgotten that he was much the quicker Williams driver even when he had Nick Heidfeld and then Nico Rosberg alongside him. Patrick Head thought he was signing the new Alan Jones - the perfect Williams driver - but was disappointed by what he felt was an overly-critical approach. But it's probably fair to say that had Alan Jones found the same shortcomings at Williams back in the day, he'd have been critical too.

ADRIAN NEWEY NEEDS NO CONVINCING

In seven seasons of F1, Webber has yet to be paired with a team-mate who can consistently match his pace. His qualifying superiority over David Coulthard has been at least a match for that of Mika Hakkinen's or Kimi Raikkonen's previously. Yes, there have been race errors, but precious few in the past couple of seasons. What's more they often came when defending a place the car had no right to be in because he'd transcended its level in qualifying.

Red Bull's Adrian Newey needs no convincing. "He's really impressed me," he says. "He's not only very fast but very good at picking out subtle changes, particularly aerodynamic changes where you make changes too subtle to see in the data but he will pick them up."

It's that same fine-honed sensitivity that allows him such a great feel for the grip of the tyres in qualifying in a formula where their performance can be very inconsistent. It was this that made him such a supreme performer in the single-lap qualifying format where there was no prior running to establish grip levels.

There's a chance Webber could leave F1 having never achieved his potential. If that happens, to an extent it will be because of at least one bad call outside the cockpit: turning down a Renault drive for 2005 in favour of Williams.

There's arguably another error even more damaging: he was on McLaren's short-list of potential Alonso replacements until he said he doubted Hamilton would be lucky enough to have as good a car in '08 as he'd had in '07 because historically McLaren made a good car followed by 'a shitbox'.

That did not go down well at McLaren and when he followed it up with his criticism of Hamilton's driving under the Fuji safety car, his chances there were extinguished.

"I'm absolutely not interested in hanging around in F1 just to finish fifth and sixth indefinitely," he says. "I'd sooner go and do something else."

He's too competitive a soul to stay too much longer in a car that cannot fight for victories. But he's probably twice blown his chances of climbing into a ready-made winner. His best hope is that the Newey-led Red Bull design team can conjure something special for next year. But going up against Ferrari, McLaren, BMW etc, that is one very big ask.