Mark Webber has rubbished suggestions he backed up the train of cars behind him intentionally, in order to benefit Sebastian Vettel’s race position.
The German managed to jump from ninth to fourth by running longer on the soft tyre in his first stint – having been given the choice by not setting a timed lap during final qualifying.
That meant he rejoined ahead of McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton, and just behind Fernando Alonso, Nico Rosberg and his team-mate, who had all been within a few seconds of one another.
Writing in his BBC column, Webber denied the rumour.
“I heard afterwards people had been speculating that I was ‘backing up’ Nico [Rosberg], Fernando [Alonso] and McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton, who was also behind me, to help my team-mate Sebastian Vettel gain places.
“That is absolute rubbish. You just cannot be that fancy around Monaco.
“Ultimately, Seb ran out of tyres and he had to pit because the rest of us started to go quicker, but if they’d kept going he would have been pushing for the win.”
The Australian says had he intentionally slowed down to back the pack up, then Vettel would have rejoined higher than fourth.
“If we had been trying anything on, I could have been even cuter. I cleared Seb by quite a lot. If I’d wanted to slide him in among other people, I could have slowed down and it would have been even better for the team. But it just wasn’t part of the plan.
“The problem with trying to do that would be that you’re exposing yourself to even more pressure from the guys behind – Nico and Fernando in this case. And then the boys in the pits might mess up Seb’s stop and it would all be for nothing.
“You always get bitten on the bum when you get fancy. So you just don’t try.”
