Red Bull once again came unstuck in the wet as they squandered a front-row lockout to finish in the low end of the points. The team will seriously need to improve their wet weather performance if they are to stand any chance of a World Championship this season.

In dry conditions in qualifying, both Red Bull’s dominated once again with Sebastian Vettel just pipping Mark Webber to pole position. Both cars weren’t happy with their performance throughout practise on Friday and Saturday and Vettel admitted he was surprised to have got pole.

After a clear jump start from Fernando Alonso, Webber managed to jump Vettel at the start and must have thought his luck was finally about to change. But again, this was not to be the case. As the first batch of rain came, Webber rightly got preference when it came to changing to intermediate tyres. But once again, the Red Bull’s troublesome wheel guns made sure that both Red Bull’s races were compromised.

Once the field got going again, Webber was 4 or 5 kilometres an hour slower down the 1km straight than most of the other cars. This was to combat the rain that did not appear in force until half way through the race. Subsequently, Webber’s race was ruined by slow straight line speed and he was getting destroyed down the straight. Was this a tactical error by Red Bull? As good as the weather systems are, surely a team should not try and predict the weather a day in advance.

Lap 6 saw the now infamous pit-lane incident between Lewis Hamilton and Vettel. Which driver was at fault? My opinion is neither. In my opinion, McLaren did not release Hamilton early. Both cars were released at the same time but Hamilton had a huge tank-slapper on his way out of the pits, which allowed Vettel to catch up. Vettel however did not need to squeeze Hamilton across the pit-lane which, if anything, is worse than whatever McLaren did. You simply cannot push another driver across into another team’s pit garage. I would love to hear your views on this.

It soon became clear that changing to intermediate tyres in the first place was a huge tactical error. Why if a team can predict weather 24 hours before the race can they not predict weather for the next 15 minutes in the race?!

The Red Bull’s simply did not have the speed required in wet weather conditions, and that includes Webber having a wet weather set-up already! It does raise the question, is Mark Webber truly deserving of a front-team drive? I have serious doubts over whether he has the ability to maintain his obvious one-lap speed in qualifying. Again, your thoughts on this are more than welcome.

Once the race settled down in the heavier rain conditions, Red Bull did have more pace than earlier in the race but they were still not troubling the fastest lap times. Why is the Red Bull so much slower in wet conditions? It’s the equivalent of Brawn’s problems last year when they were slower in hot conditions. Surely the best designers in the world could sort a problem like these?!

After the race, Mark Webber admitted to the BBC this lack of pace and says the team need to vastly improve if they are to stand any chance of winning the World Championship.

“They were difficult, changeable conditions, but they are the same for everyone and the car, our car, is sensitive in these conditions. We need to understand why we were not able, especially out of the restart, why we were not able to be there straight away. We were lacking a little bit of temperatures in the tyre.”

Despite Red Bull getting pole position in every race so far, the team find themselves in 3rd place in the Constructors Championship on just 73 points.

And the obvious speed of the Red Bull has so far found Vettel and Webber in 5th and 8th places respectively in the Drivers’ Championship.

And to all Formula One ‘fans’ who think it’s all about the car, this season is clearly proving them wrong!

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