Webber happy to ride his luck

A large slice of luck generally comes into play and Australia's Mark Webber may just be able to sleep a little easier after his third place in Sunday's dramatic Singapore Grand Prix stretched his lead at the top of the standings to 11 points.

Not only did Webber's pre-race closest rival Lewis Hamilton fail to finish Sunday night's race after a collision between the two, but it later transpired Webber had only survived a similar fate by the merest of whiskers. "He was very, very lucky. It was just 5mm from slipping off," Bridgestone's director of motorsport tyre development Hirohide Hamashima said of Webber's tyre following the collision with Hamilton.

"If it had slipped off then the pressure would probably have gone down. So Mark was lucky there, but also with the track too. If there were very high-speed left hand corners here, then the tyre would have moved a little bit more and then it would have been finished."
Hamashima said he had never seen a tyre stay inflated like that before. "Over 25 laps is incredible," he told Autosport.

The Bridgestone expert's opinion was validated by Red Bull team principal Christian Horner who admitted his man had been fortunate. "Mark has ridden his luck because looking at the state of that front right tyre it is pretty much off the rim," Horner said."I have never seen anything like it."

Webber agreed fortune had smiled on him. "The tyres at the end... there was nothing left of them," he said.

Webber leads the championship with four races to go.