Is Mark Webber entirely the innocent party in 'Multi-21-Gate' or is he playing it for all its worth? Alex Jennings believes there may be extenuating circumstances behind Sebastian Vettel's grab for glory at Sepang.

Red Bull have said they are going to sort out Sebastian Vettel's wilful disobedience of team orders at the Malaysian Grand Prix behind closed doors. Which is a pity for us. The full facts certainly won't become clear before we get to the Chinese GP in Shanghai, but in years to come, as Red Bull personnel move to other teams, we may get a few more fragments of what happened at Sepang in 2013.

Disobeying a team order is a serious misdemeanour and triple World Champion Sebastian Vettel has been vilified as a result of it. But anybody who has listened to Sebastian in the past will appreciate that he's a thinking driver and that grabbing the chance of victory was probably more than just a red mist of opportunity. He may have thought he deserved it for a number of reasons - because of what has happened in the past, or some of the odd strategy calls in the race.

So when the teams reconvene in Shanghai it would be good to ask the Red Bull management a number of questions. Number one - what was Mark's strategy for the grand prix? Vettel pitted at the end of Lap 5 for slicks, took on mediums and made them last till the end of Lap 22 when he took on the hard tyre.

Webber pitted at the end of Lap 7 and took on the hard tyre which only lasted him till the end of Lap 19. Staying out two laps longer had given him the lead, but in the second stint, on the hard tyre, he couldn't shrug off Vettel and surprised commentators by coming in so early. Who was he racing at that stage - Vettel, or the two Mercedes behind Vettel?

Webber wasn't able to make his mediums last as well as Vettel in the second stint. And while Vettel was able to close up on Webber when the Aussie had hards and the German had mediums - when they swapped tyres Vettel was quicker on the hards as well.

The gaps on Lap 23 were:
Lap 23: Webber to Vettel, 2.6: Vettel to Hamilton 2.1: Hamilton to Rosberg 3.3

At this stage Lewis Hamilton was flying with a fastest lap of 1:41.610 putting pressure on Vettel. In fact, the three cars following Webber were all closing in. Webber suddenly slowed down by 1.4 seconds to the cars behind. Thus the gaps on Lap 24 were:
Lap 24: Webber to Vettel, 1.2: Vettel to Hamilton 1.8: Hamilton to Rosberg 2.6
Lap 25: Webber to Vettel, 0.5: Vettel to Hamilton 1.7: Hamilton to Rosberg 2.3
Lap 26: Webber to Vettel, 0.4: Vettel to Hamilton 1.3: Hamilton to Rosberg 2.6
Lap 27: Webber to Vettel, 0.7: Vettel to Hamilton 1.0: Hamilton to Rosberg 1.9
Lap 28: Webber to Vettel, 1.3: Vettel to Hamilton 1.2: Hamilton to Rosberg 2.2

It was around Lap 26/27 that Vettel uttered his dismissive "Mark is too slow, get him out of the way," which sounded exactly like the kind of thing that a 'protected' spoilt boy would say. But the lap times show that Mark was only five laps into his stint on the mediums, could have gone faster, and was backing Vettel up into the two Mercedes. If his intent was to try and run as slowly as possible on a faster tyre than Vettel, then the logical thing would have been to let Vettel through as their strategies were different. Vettel had proved in the first stint that he could make the medium tyre last longer, so why wasn't he let through?

Autosport's Mark Hughes believes that Webber was backing Vettel into the cars behind, just as he had been before their infamous clash in Turkey in 2010. Vettel was irate at not being allowed to run his true pace - because his engineer was soon on the radio telling him not to follow too close in the fast corners - and also aware that the two cars behind him were running on his pace and not Webber's.

As a result of dropping back close to the Mercedes, Vettel fell behind Lewis Hamilton at the next round of pit-stops. Webber didn't. As we subsequently found out, Lewis Hamilton was hugely overdrawn on his fuel balance to be in that position and had to go into serious fuel-saving mode, but Webber didn't know that. Webber may have thought that he'd successfully pushed his team-mate back a place.

Going into the final round of pit-stops, Vettel stopped first and was charging on track. It would have been interesting to know exactly when the "multi 21" call came on team radio for him to hold station. Webber dived in for his final pit-stop at the end of Lap 43 and when he emerged on Lap 44 he was side by side with Vettel going into Turn 1.

Given that there can be glitches in pit-stops, you can't imagine that the team would issue a call to hold station and turn down engines before the final pit-stops had played out. So presumably that first piece of side-by-side racing between the two team-mates on lap 44 was admissible. It is only subsequent to that, that Vettel's desire to get past Webber contravened "multi 21".

Mark says he was asked to turn the engine down after the final pit-stop, so when did he do it? Probably not between the exit of the pitlane and the apex of Turn 1. In interviews after the race Mark seemed to be suggesting that his engine was turned down and he was cruising, but he wasn't cruising until Vettel had passed him. If that had been the case, what would be the point of veering across in front of Vettel and trying to pin him against the pitwall down the straight if he knew Vettel had DRS and Webber's engine was turned down...?

As other people have suggested - a lot of this goes back to the World Championship conclusion of 2012 when Webber acted anything but a team-mate - as Andrew Davies noted in the Winners and Losers column after the Brazilian GP.

Christian Horner must have been on auto-pilot/auto-quote after the race when he called Mark Webber a great team player. It's hard to know what help he was at the start when he moved across and blocked Vettel's line, forcing him to give up places to Alonso and Hulkenberg. That was the one thing he had to do, make sure Seb got a clean get away and he blocked him. It's not like he didn't know Vettel was going to be there.
Then on the re-start after the Safety Car he attacked his team-mate into Turn 1 and put him under the kind of pressure he really didn't need...

Horner smiled for the cameras, but the full force of anger at Webber's behaviour that day was stored up by Red Bull's special advisor Helmut Marko and unleashed in his withering appraisal of Webber's ability to withstand pressure in the Red Bull house magazine.

Webber himself isn't immune to ignoring team orders either. At Silverstone in 2011 Fernando Alonso was cruising to an easy win, followed home by Vettel and a closing-fast Mark Webber (who had just overtaken a fuel-saving Lewis Hamilton). The team told him to hold P3 and he ignored their instruction and went for the second place. Vettel held him off.

This is just some of the background to Vettel's decision to ignore team orders and ****** a win from his team-mate. Had the two collided then it would have been Vettel's fault. On the surface it looked like the action of an arrogant driver who is above the rules set down by the team. In reality it's a lot more complex and there may have been provocations that - without access to the Red Bull strategy for the Malaysian GP - gave Vettel the sense of entitlement that he clearly felt. There is no question that he was in the wrong and that he shouldn't have risked so much so early in the season. But it looks like there were extenuating circumstances.

Mark Webber may have lost the race but very craftily - he's won the aftermath.