By Ian Lockwood
April 14 2007

Mark Webber continued to impress for Red Bull Racing after qualifying in a strong eighth position for tomorrow’s 57-lap Bahrain Grand Prix, thus making it three top ten starts out of three races so far for the 30-year old Australian.

While gearbox gremlins prevented team-mate David Coulthard from progressing beyond the first qualifying session, Webber had no such problems and sailed through the first session in 11^thposition with a time of 1min 33.496s. Webber set the pace early on in qualifying two before being bumped down the order by Nick Heidfeld and Lewis Hamilton but was still holding seventh position when he went out for his final run in the closing minutes of the session. His improved time of 1min 32.808s was enough to snatch ninth fastest, just ahead of his former Williams team-mate Nico Rosberg.

After the customary laps to burn off fuel in qualifying three, the pit lane became a hive of activity in the final few minutes as the drivers got down to the serious business of setting their qualifying times. Webber was the first out with just over three minutes and immediately punched in a 1min 34.106s which was good enough for sixth fastest but was ultimately shuffled back to eighth.

“Yeah, I’m pretty happy with today,” he said afterwards, “although I would have liked to have got Giancarlo as it would have placed me on the cleaner, left-hand side of the grid tomorrow. We aren’t in the same race as McLaren, Ferrari and BMW – our immediate competition is Renault, Toyota and Williams and so eighth position is really second on the grid in our race, so it’s not too bad. It would be nice to get some points for the boys tomorrow but realistically it’s hard to see how we can crack the top six. Hopefully, we can pick up the odd point or two in seventh or eighth. We’re certainly losing interest in finishing races outside the points.

“Overall, we’re now operating just inside the top ten give or take and are making good progress. To make the jump onto the back part of those ahead of us in the next few months is going to be hard but it’s what we’re aiming for.”