Helmut Marko: “Mark knew that he was slower…�

Red Bull’s Helmut Marko says that Mark Webber knew he was slower than the pursuing Sebastian Vettel in Istanbul, and should have let his team mate through.

Intriguingly Christian Horner told this blog today that just before the accident Webber had radioed the team and asked that Vettel should back off a little.

That would tend to support Marko’s contention that Vettel had more speed and, with Hamilton right on his tail, couldn’t really reduce the pressure on the leader.

“Mark for whatever reason was slower," Marko told this blog after the race. “He was getting lap by lap slower, and Vettel was getting faster and was coming under enormous pressure from Hamilton. So if he would have stayed behind Mark, he would have been overtaken. So he had to do something. And Mark knew that he was slower, so he should have let him past.

“We have to talk with all the people involved and make sure it doesn’t happen again, because we still could have been one-two. Until this incident, everything worked perfectly, our team did really well with the pit stop planning and everything."