Coulthard gives his view of the Silverstone-incident at Red Bull

The British Grand Prix ended in victory for Mark Webber, but from the outside it looks like the relationship is becoming strained with the team management. Mark's former Red Bull Racing team-mate and BBC F1 pundit David Coulthard gives us his view of events in Silverstone...

David Coulthard wrote: "There are two ways of running a race team. You can either go the Ferrari-Schumacher route, with one driver openly backed over the other. Or you can go for an equal partnership.

"The first is the most effective way of winning a championship but morally dubious. The second is the fairer system but is incredibly volatile and difficult to put into practice. My preference is for the second system. I once turned down the chance of a move to Ferrari as I would not accept being a signed-up number two to Michael. Red Bull are clearly a team trying to do it the fair way, whatever Mark Webber may have said at Silverstone.

"I have a huge amount of respect for Mark, and he had his own reasons for saying what he did. He clearly felt aggrieved that the team gave Sebastian Vettel his wing prior to qualifying, and he saw an opportunity to turn the situation in his favour by making his feelings plain to the media. That is his prerogative.

"In many respects, that bloody-minded attitude is what I wish I had shown on the two occasions during my career, at Jerez in 1997 and Melbourne a year later, when I was asked to make way for my McLaren team-mate, Mika Hakkinen.

"I will never know whether my compliance cost me the chance of a championship. Arguably Mika was the more complete driver anyway, but perhaps those incidents gave him additional confidence or subconsciously dented mine, as well as my self-esteem.

"That is not to say, though, that I agree with Mark. As Christian Horner explained, his team were in an invidious position. With just one new front wing and two hungry drivers, he applied a logic he felt would give Red Bull the best chance of winning the championship. That is his prerogative.

"OK, so the logic helped Sebastian as the leading driver, but to be fair to the team, with the standings now reversed, they have already said they will apply the same logic next time, which would help Mark.

"The mistake Red Bull made, and which Christian has admitted, was that they did not go into the weekend with that system already in place and publicly known; that way they would not have left themselves open to accusations of partisanship.

"This is not sitting on the fence. This is the paradox of Formula One. The driver-team relationship is one of the most complex in sport; a multi-million pound marriage with the divorce papers signed on the same day as the wedding. The relationship will end; that much is certain. It is just a question of time. During that time, both sides will try to extract the most they can from the partnership.

"Red Bull would doubtless prefer it if Mark aired his grievances in private. Mark, who suspects Red Bull’s Austrian owners would prefer Vettel to win the championship, clearly feels he can gain more leverage by going public and trying to shame the team whenever he feels hard done by.

"It is a risky strategy. If it goes wrong, the relationship with the team could sour irreparably. If it comes off, he could consolidate his position, attract public sympathy and be remembered as a steely champion who battled against the odds to win his title.

"There were reports on Sunday night that Mark’s side of the garage taunted Seb’s. I have no idea if that is true – I have to say I sincerely doubt it – but race teams are tight-knit communities so this is undoubtedly a very big test for Christian. I think he is up to it.

"He started the healing process with some appalling karaoke at the post-race party on Sunday night. It is easy to forget that Red Bull won the race on Sunday with a car that was out of this world; Adrian Newey has now designed 11 British Grand Prix-winning cars and the team are in great shape.

"Red Bull learnt from Istanbul and they will learn from this. When the dust settles, I think they will take more positives than negatives."