Webber leaves his mark on German GP

His sideways lunge at Rubens Barrichello earn-ed him what I thought was a justified drive though penalty.
Over the years, the under-performing Webber has set himself up as something of a spokesperson for the F1 brigade and took it upon himself to be liberally critical of a number of aspects of Michael Sch-umacher’s driving, not least the German’s occasionally forceful defensive tactics off the line. I always thought Webber’s occupation of the pulpit steps was somewhat rich, especially as he was bereft of a single win and he was basically telling a 91-time winner what to do.
The oft-disputed rules on defensive driving state that one blocking move is kosher, but two constitute a punishable crime. Now if you care to watch the start of the German GP again, you’ll observe Webber makes a determined move to the right to block, or so he thought, the line to the first corner which Rubens was threatening to usurp for himself. Nothing wrong with that, but the problem arose when Barrichello’s Brawn still managed to get alongside Webber’s Red Bull at which point the Austra-lian made a sudden, aggressive lunge to the right and apparently made contact.
That’s two moves in my book, but what compounded the crime was Webber’s protestation, when interviewed about his clearly aggressive intentions, that he was not aware of Barrichello’s presence!  Garbage. If his peripheral vision is so poor that he can’t see something alongside him, he should be living at the optician, but had he genuinely thought there was no-one there, what triggered him to make the red mist move to the right? On reflection though, I wonder if the corks hanging off his helmet may have had something to do with his selective vision.
Whatever, he still won and in so doing confirmed that he holds a Formula 1 record of dubious value — that is to compete in the most races before achieving a win. The previous title holders are as follows:
M. Webber 130
R. Barrichello 124
J. Trulli 117
J. Button 113
G. Fisichella 110
Feuding family
The Porsche and Piech families held a meeting last Sunday in Salzburg to try and reach some sort of unanimity on how to extricate the Porsche holding company from its debt burden created by an over-ambitious and unsuccessful attempt to take control of VW.
In simple terms, the recession has reduced Porsche’s earnings such that the company cannot meet the interest charges on loans taken out to buy an intended controlling stake in VW and also continue with its policy of continuous spending on product development.
Oil-rich Qatar, represented by Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani (I had to get that in!) appears willing to cough up for a 25 percent share in Porsche Automobil Hold-ing and a similar percentage in VW stock options.  Ferdinand Piech, Chairp-erson of Volkswagen and a Porsche shareholder in his personal capacity (he’s married into the family) is keener to absorb Porsche into the overall VW empire and has reportedly offered more than US$5,58 billion of VW money to buy around half the famous sports car firm.
Given that influential cousin Wolfgang Porsche is in the Qatar camp,  the supervisory board meeting on July 23 at which a decision will be made, will be of massive interest to industry observers. My money’s on Piech, the architect of the VW empire which presently encompasses Audi, Lam-borghini, Skoda, Seat, Scania, MAN, Bentley and Bugatti. 
(To be continued next week)