The Season Mark Webber Took the Crown

Created: August 3, 2026 · Updated: August 3, 2026

This article was generated by AI. Part One (recorded history) may contain inaccuracies; Part Two (alternate history) is entirely fictional.

TL;DR

In the recorded history Sebastian Vettel beat his Red Bull teammate Mark Webber and Ferrari's Fernando Alonso to the 2010 Formula 1 title at Abu Dhabi, and their relationship collapsed three years later when Vettel ignored the "Multi 21" hold-station order in Malaysia. In this account Webber keeps his car out of the wall in the Korean rain, inherits the win when Vettel's engine fails, and takes the championship by nineteen points. A chastened Red Bull writes hold-station discipline into both 2011 contracts, so when the coded call goes out at Sepang in 2013 it is obeyed, and Formula 1 never acquires its most famous phrase for a broken team order.

Part One: Recorded History

Mark Webber joined Red Bull Racing in 2007 and was partnered with Sebastian Vettel from 2009 onwards, forming one of the most productive and most combustible driver pairings of the modern era. Webber's first Grand Prix victory came at the Nurburgring in 2009, ending a drought for Australian winners that stretched back to Alan Jones in 1981. The 2010 season, run over nineteen rounds, gave Red Bull the fastest car on the grid in the hands of designer Adrian Newey, and the championship became a four-way contest between Webber, Vettel, Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton.

Webber took four wins that year, in Spain, Monaco, Britain and Hungary, along with three pole positions, and he led the drivers' standings for much of the summer. Vettel took five wins across the same campaign, and the two Red Bulls repeatedly took points off each other rather than off their rivals. At the Turkish Grand Prix in round seven the pair collided while fighting for the lead on lap forty, ending Vettel's race and handing the win to McLaren's Hamilton ahead of Jenson Button.

Before the British Grand Prix, Red Bull gave a single new-specification front wing to Vettel rather than to Webber, who had qualified on pole; Webber won the race anyway and told the pit wall over the radio that it was not bad for a number two driver. Ferrari's own team-order controversy that season, in which Felipe Massa was told at Hockenheim that Fernando was faster than him, earned the Scuderia a fine of one hundred thousand dollars and framed 2010 as a year of open questions about intra-team hierarchy. Red Bull's public position was that its drivers were free to race, a policy Christian Horner defended repeatedly even as the internal cost mounted.

Going into the Abu Dhabi finale at Yas Marina, Alonso led on 246 points, Webber had 238, Vettel 231 and Hamilton 222. Ferrari, watching Webber rather than Vettel, pitted Alonso early in response to Webber's own early stop, and both men emerged into traffic on a circuit where overtaking was close to impossible in the last season before DRS was introduced. Alonso spent the second half of the race trapped behind Vitaly Petrov's Renault and finished seventh, while Webber finished eighth.

Vettel led from the front, won the race, and took the title by four points, becoming at twenty-three the youngest World Drivers' Champion in the sport's history. Webber finished the year third on 242 points, ten behind Alonso and fourteen behind his own teammate, and he never came as close again. Vettel went on to win the championship in 2011, 2012 and 2013, making him the youngest four-time champion at twenty-six.

The relationship broke down completely at the 2013 Malaysian Grand Prix, where Webber led after the final stops and both cars were given the coded instruction "Multi 21," meaning car two ahead of car one to the finish. Vettel ignored it, passed Webber late in the race despite pleas from his race engineer and from Horner, and won. Webber later said that Red Bull received a two-page letter from Vettel's lawyer days afterwards, arguing that the order had been an unreasonable instruction and a breach of contract.

Webber had already decided to leave, and announced in mid-2013 that he would quit Formula 1 at the end of the season to join Porsche's new LMP1 programme, closing an F1 career of 215 starts, nine wins, thirteen poles and forty-two podiums. With Porsche he won the 2015 FIA World Endurance Championship alongside Timo Bernhard and Brendon Hartley in the 919 Hybrid, decided in a tense Bahrain finale, though outright victory at Le Mans always eluded him, and he retired from racing at the end of 2016 to become a Porsche brand ambassador. Vettel's own Red Bull era ended a year after Webber's departure, beaten by the newcomer Daniel Ricciardo across 2014, after which he moved to Ferrari for 2015 as Alonso's replacement.

Part Two: Alternate History

The divergence comes on lap nineteen of the 2010 Korean Grand Prix at Yeongam, on a track streaming with standing water, where Webber in the recorded account lost the car, struck the wall and collected Nico Rosberg. In this account Webber lifts a fraction earlier through the same corner, keeps the Red Bull out of the barrier, and rejoins in the leading group. Everything that follows comes from a race that continues rather than one that ends.

Vettel still leads commandingly, and his Renault engine still fails with the finish in sight. Webber, running second by then, inherits the lead and wins the wettest race of the season. Alonso, who won at Yeongam in the recorded history, takes eighteen points instead of twenty-five.

The swing across two men in a single afternoon is thirty-two points, and it decides a championship. Webber arrives in Brazil with the lead and leaves South America on 263 points against Alonso's 239 and Vettel's 231. At Yas Marina Red Bull no longer needs a gamble: nobody calls Webber in early, Ferrari has nothing to cover, and Petrov's celebrated defence of seventh place merely tidies a title that is already settled.

Vettel wins the race from pole and finishes the year on 256 points, while Webber, running a deliberately conservative fourth, finishes on 275 and becomes World Champion. He is thirty-four years old, the oldest champion since Michael Schumacher in 2004, and the first Australian champion since Alan Jones in 1980. The record for the youngest champion stays with Hamilton, and Vettel's 2010 is remembered as the year he was beaten by his own teammate.

The deeper consequence is institutional rather than statistical, because Red Bull has just watched a season of intra-team collisions come within one wet corner of handing the title to Ferrari, and it draws the opposite lesson from the one it drew in the recorded account. Over the winter Horner and Helmut Marko write a hold-station protocol into both drivers' 2011 contracts, negotiated in an office with both men and their lawyers rather than improvised on a pit-to-car radio. Vettel still wins in 2011 and 2012 with the RB7 and the RB8, and takes a third title in 2013, and his margin over a reigning-champion teammate is what makes his reputation rather than a precocious record doing it for him.

When Malaysia 2013 comes, Webber leads after the final stops and the coded call goes out to both cars exactly as it did in the recorded history. This time the instruction is contractual, both men know it, and Vettel holds a second and a half back for the remaining laps. Webber wins in Sepang, Red Bull banks an unremarkable one-two, and no letter from a lawyer arrives at Milton Keynes. "Multi 21" never leaves the team's radio traffic and never becomes the sport's shorthand for a broken team order; the phrase that survives from the era is instead the Yeongam gamble that Red Bull never had to make.

Webber still leaves for Porsche's LMP1 programme at the end of 2013, but he arrives as a world champion, and the same hold-station discipline governs the two 919 Hybrids at Le Mans in 2015, where the running order is settled in the pit lane and Webber takes the overall win that eluded him in the recorded account. Vettel still loses 2014 to Ricciardo and still moves to Ferrari for 2015, though he goes as a three-time champion chasing a fourth, out of a rivalry that ended in respect rather than in a two-page letter.

Notable Figures

Mark Webber – Australian Red Bull driver, third in the 2010 championship in the recorded history and its champion in the alternate account.
Sebastian Vettel – German Red Bull driver, 2010 champion and four-time champion in the recorded history, three-time champion and disciplined teammate in the alternate account.
Fernando Alonso – Ferrari driver who led the 2010 standings into the finale and lost the title by four points, and by a wider margin in the alternate account.
Lewis Hamilton – McLaren driver and the fourth 2010 title contender, who keeps the youngest-champion record in the alternate account.
Christian Horner – Red Bull team principal who defended a free-to-race policy, and who codifies hold-station discipline after 2010 in the alternate account.
Adrian Newey – Red Bull chief technical officer and designer of the dominant 2010 car.
Helmut Marko – Red Bull motorsport consultant, co-author of the 2011 hold-station protocol in the alternate account.
Vitaly Petrov – Renault driver whose defence at Abu Dhabi held Alonso back and effectively decided the 2010 title.
Felipe Massa – Ferrari driver told at Hockenheim in 2010 to yield to Alonso, the season's other team-order controversy.
Daniel Ricciardo – Australian who replaced Webber at Red Bull and outscored Vettel in 2014.
Jenson Button – McLaren driver who finished second in Turkey after the Red Bull collision.
Nico Rosberg – Mercedes driver collected by Webber's crash in the Korean rain, which does not happen in the alternate account.
Timo Bernhard – Porsche endurance driver and Webber's title-winning crewmate in the 2015 World Endurance Championship.
Brendon Hartley – New Zealand Porsche endurance driver and Webber's other 2015 crewmate.
Alan Jones – Australian who won the 1980 title, the last before Webber in the alternate account.
Michael Schumacher – seven-time champion whose 2004 title at thirty-five is the age benchmark Webber's alternate championship measures against.