Webber looks ahead

Mark Webber remained in championship contention until late in the 2009 season and believes that Red Bull Renault will once again challenge for top honours.

The Australian racer believes that Mercedes, Ferrari and McLaren will prove his strongest rivals having completed his first tests of the new RB6 at Jerez last week.

"We all have it in our heads that Michael Schumacher is with the championship-winning team, and they are of course looking to win the championship again," Webber told the official F1 website.

"McLaren have two world champions, Red Bull was very strong last year and got a lot of points, Fernando is with Ferrari and Felipe Massa is also doing very well.

"That’s what everybody is thinking - that you’ve got these four teams who will decide the championship amongst them, but as always we will have some dark horses who will pop up here and there. Those drivers I just mentioned are just the logical candidates you might think of."

Predicting who will be challenging for wins and the championship is a difficult business as a number of less fancied driver have shown well in testing so far. With refuelling banned this year Webber points out that the lap times will decrease by as much a five second from the start of the race to the chequered flag.

“Kobayashi was doing fantastic times on Thursday, and the (Sauber Ferrari) car looks amazing, but how much fuel was he on - What is his time worth,” Webber questioned. “It’s the fuel that makes the car look so different.”