Steve Cooper: On the Limit

It's always worth heading down to Red Bull's bustling Energy Station at least once a weekend for a chat with Mark Webber.

Catch him early enough, before he becomes too wrapped up with the goings-on of the weekend and gradually withdraws in order to maintain his focus for the race, and you get an accurate barometer of a man's appreciation for and dissatisfaction with Formula 1.

Feistier and more resilient than most drivers, he's famously straight-talking and unafraid to offer up opinions that others would be too scared to vent. And, with a career seemingly on the line following a string of seats that have failed to deliver on their promise, most drivers in his position would be filled with bluff and bravado. But a talk with Webber is still honest and illuminating. That's not to say that Webber never gets downbeat about the team's performance.

Blunt and frank, yet totally mindful that harnessing negative energy is a pointless downward spiral, he puts it to better use, often using these media briefings to unravel his thoughts and exorcise a few demons in public.

So, on a damp Thursday afternoon in Germany, Webber happily chewed the fat with a handful of journalists, answering the inevitable pre-weekend build-up questions.

But as the pack of writers slimmed down, he began to open up, first venting his frustrations at the straitjacketed way in which the sport markets and promotes itself, before moving on to analyse and critique his opening half of the season. In particular, he looked deeply at his ability to get to grips with Bridgestone's difficult control tyres.

"The level of grip during the tyre war was much peakier," he explained, clamping his fingers and thumbs into a small pyramid to explain the grip levels. "So once you'd got into that tiny operating window, you were quick. Time and time again, you'd see guys in testing who couldn't find that single-lap pace because they could never get into that last three or four per cent that the tyre could give them."

While the old tyre-war rubber would reward bravery, he continued, this current breed of tyre actually punishes drivers who try to push over the limit, scrubbing off speed as the car squirms about beneath you. And, as everyone knows, backing off in order to go faster is anathema to a racing driver.

Over the past few weeks, Kimi Raikkonen, Robert Kubica, Fernando Alonso and Ralf Schumacher have all started to get to grips with the new rubber, each usually describing a point where they have finally been able to 'meet in the middle'; bringing the car closer to the tyre while also adopting a different, more forgiving driving style to get the best out of it.

For Webber, too, there has been that window of enlightenment. "It's bizarre," he conceded. "I'm starting to feel a bit more confident now - and I don't know why. Yes, it's taken time to learn how to make the car work on these tyres. But what pisses me off the most is learning what I need to do with the set-up. It does my head in. I knew exactly what to do in the past and now, sometimes, I tell the guys in the garage not to touch anything because I simply don't know what to do with the tyre yet."

On Saturday we saw those words being practically applied. We watched Webber wring the neck of his car, ragging it to the limit through Q2 and dropping it neatly into sixth place, while his team-mates failed to even scrape out of Q1. A day later he repeated the feat, never dropping out of touch and taking a podium when it would have been all to easy to slither down the order at each successively unravelling stage of the grand prix.

It was a reminder that, when Webber's machinery allows him to walk the walk, his actions are every bit as conclusive as his words. Let's hope it becomes a regular fixture. Until then, we'll content ourselves by coming back every weekend to hear him talk the talk.