Many assume that Mark Webber will retire at the end of the 2012 season to give up his Red Bull seat to a junior driver, similar to what David Coulthard did with Sebastian Vettel, but the Australian says 2012 might not be the year he leaves after admitting he could see himself staying for longer.
Next season will be Webber’s tenth year in Formula 1 having began his career back in 2002 with Minardi before joining Jaguar, where he remained for two seasons.
That was followed by a two-year stint at BMW/Williams, before making his final move to Red Bull, where he has been since 2007, replacing Robert Doornbos.
His contract ends at the end of the year, but the way in which Helmut Marko extends them – a year at a time – means Webber could yet remain with the Milton Keynes outfit past 2012.
“Absolutely, I can see myself going a bit longer,” he said in an interview with the Daily Mail.
“Helmut’s been quite keen to do one-year contracts, and in a way it hasn’t been too bad for me as well,” he added. “That’s been his starting point for the last three or four years.
“That’s the way it’s been, and as always it gets to the middle of the year, we sit down and have a chat about things.”
The 35-year-old endured a relatively poor season compared to Vettel who won 11 of the 19 races, whilst Webber achieved a single win, but Webber is certain of a resurgence next year.
“All of us apart from Seb obviously didn’t have the year in many ways that we wanted to,” he continued. “But you can’t still deny the fact that we had a bloody consistent year which you can take for granted some times.
“I didn’t get as many wins as I wanted, but on the points front, I think Jenson [Button] and I, scored enough to have won the title last year, but this year the points were blown out because Seb had such a good season.
“That’s just the way it went, and sometimes that happens in sport – when someone gets on such a roll and the momentum is flowing. It’s up to us to make sure that doesn’t happen next year.”
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