The 34-year-old Australian caught German Vettel in the final laps and despite instructions from his team telling him to 'maintain the gap', he mounted several unsuccessful overtaking attempts before settling for third behind winner Fernando Alonso.

"I am not fine with it, no," he said. "If Fernando (Alonso) retires on the last lap, we are fighting for the win.

"Of course I ignored the team because I wanted to try and get a place. Seb was doing his best, I was doing my best. I wasn't going to crash with anyone.

"I try to do my best with the amount of one way conversation I was having - I was trying to do my best to pass the guy in front."

"Four or five laps to go, they started to chat to me about holding my position. I wanted the points but I also wanted to get some more points as well.

"I just wanted to race to the end and I'm sure if it had been the other way round it would have been like that as well."

Defending drivers' champion Vettel, 24, said he understood why the team asked them not to race each other but conceded that he had enjoyed the battle.

"I try to stay ahead, nothing wrong with that," he said.

"If you have the cars quite isolated in second and third, with the first guy away and the fourth guy pretty far away, from the team's point of view there is no point racing and doing something stupid.

"The difference between second and third is not massive but we naturally try to race. I tried to hold position. I was struggling, Mark was faster and then there was the chequered flag."

Vettel added that he thought the situation had been blown wildly out of proportion.

"To me at this stage it is quite amusing," he said.

"If it was the other way around, there is no point - of course I would like to overtake Mark at that stage, so no point trying to do something stupid. I don't see why there is such a fuss."

This is a difficult one.  For sure I agree with what they did in theory, however, they have changed their tune since last year so one can't help but feel Webber is being disadvantaged when there is little to no reason given the championship situation.  Where last season they were allowed to race with "no team orders", it now seems they can race until Mark has a chance of overtaking Vettel and then he is told to hold position.

My hat goes off to Vettel for speaking how he feels and not towing the team line.  He understands the score and would no doubt to the same thing if the situation was reversed.

The new world champion has been a vocal opponent of some of this year's changes, particularly the increased driver workload due to the adjustable rear wing.

"Most drivers agreed it could be a safety issue," the German is quoted as saying by the Mirror.

With chairman Rubens Barrichello and Felipe Massa, 23-year-old Vettel is a director of the safety oriented Grand Prix Drivers' Association.

"The most important thing is that the drivers are together," he said.

"If we all agree on something then we can be very powerful. We can say, 'ok, we are not racing'.

"That doesn't necessarily mean we will go on strike. We'll try to find a solution with the FIA first," added Vettel.

Seems a tad strange to me that it has taken this long for this to enter the public domain. It does make us wonder whether this is a genuine concern or if the drivers are just setting up their excuses for when they finally go racing.

The good thing for motoring fans if they will likely disable the movable wing before any strike talk gets out of control. I think the first fews days in Melbourne are going to be very interesting indeed.

“It was good racing and I defended my position well against Vettel until the final lap, but then he just seemed to drive into me and I lost the racing line and had to move over - otherwise I don't think he would have got past me.

“All the same, eighth position was a good result in the end, it's more points and it keeps that momentum going. I'm really looking forward to my home Grand Prix in Germany next.”

I don't think Sutil is the only one who things Vettel's racing craft leaves a bit to be desired.

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner has been forced to defend their decision to take an updated front wing from Mark Webber's car and fit it to that of Sebastian Vettel, who promptly pipped his team-mate to pole position for Sunday's British Grand Prix.

The switch was made after Vettel's car suffered a front wing failure during Saturday morning practice at Silverstone. The German driver later beat Webber to pole by just over a tenth of a second.

Horner insisted the decision had neither "malice" nor "manipulation" behind it and was simply based on the fact that, with only one of the updates currently available, Vettel should get it because he leads Webber in the world championship.

Even so, Webber was visibly rattled in the post-qualifying press conference, when his only utterance regarding the matter was a terse: "I think the team is happy with the result today."

This is poor form. Can you imagine it uproar at McLaren if something like this happened?

In-depth interview - Sebastian Vettel

Unfortunately he doesn't clear much up.

However, former team owner turned television pundit Jordan is not convinced by Horner's words and feels that the Milton Keynes-based team now may be swaying its championship preferences towards the German driver.

 

BBC television pundit Eddie Jordan

"Christian Horner has changed his tune, it's not the same interview he did earlier on - something has happened," Eddie said in the BBC's race highlights programme, first broadcast in the United Kingdom on Sunday evening.

"I think the focus within this team has changed, it's changed from Mark Webber to Sebastian Vettel. We were always suspicious about this; I remember, when Mark won the race a couple of races ago, I asked him (Horner), 'Did the wrong man win the race?' and he kind of got his way through that.

"I am very suspicious about this interview, I don't like it; Mark Webber did not need to move off that position and when Christian is talking about 'Sebastian had saved a kilo of fuel'…it's no secret - when you're in the slipstream of somebody, you don't use the same fuel as you do when you're leading a race.

"This is complete nonsense. I just can't understand why Christian came out with such a statement."

 

 

 

 

There is Eddie Jordan speaking his mind. These comments are particularly interesting after he backed Vettel initially and didn't think it was such a black and white case against him for who is at fault.

Mark Webber is really going to have to stay on his game because it seems his team may not be behind him as much as a potential World Champion would want or need.