Alonso threatens Vettel but there is little home comfort for McLaren duo

The Spaniard ignited his and the famous prancing horse’s title challenge on the 60th anniversary of Ferrari’s first grand prix win at Silverstone.

The two-time world champion outpaced runaway world championship leader Sebastian Vettel and was also aided by a botched pit-stop that cost the German the chance of a seventh win in nine races this season.

And the grey area of team orders reared its ugly head once again as Mark Webber finished third after being told by the Red Bull team not to try and pass team-mate Vettel in the closing laps.

Webber won here last year and blasted over the car radio ‘not bad for a No 2 driver’ and he was just as miffed yesterday after the dominant British team again appeared to prioritise Vettel.

Webber is the closest pursuer of Vettel – albeit 80 points adrift – and ignored the ‘four or five’ calls he said he received from the garage to ease off the throttle.

Vettel held off his team-mate to take second, with McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton a distant fourth having started from 10th on the grid.

But Australian Webber again cut a frustrated figure.

“I’m not fine with it,” said Webber. “They (his team) started to chat to me about maintaining my speed.

“They don’t want us to crash. They want the points. But I also want the points.

“I was fighting to the end. I ignored the team.

“Seb was doing his best, I was doing my best.”

Vettel served only to heighten Webber’s angst by saying the whole notion of being favoured by his team ‘amused’ him.

“I finished second,” he said in defence of the team’s tactics. “If I wasn’t racing I would have just waved him past.

“We were racing. To me at this stage it’s quite amusing.”

It all begs the question of why a driver as determined to win as Hamilton would want to be part of a team that would favour the other driver. Hamilton was recently spotted talking with Red Bull team principal Christian Horner amid intense speculation he was unsettled at McLaren and keen to jump ship next season to join Formula 1’s fast upstarts.

Two world championship contenders in one team is almost impossible to manage; as Horner is finding out and as Alonso discovered in his one season with McLaren when he left after one year of feeling like the inferior driver.

Alonso is very much No 1 at Ferrari – as was demonstrated last year at the German Grand Prix when his team-mate Felipe Massa was told to let the Spaniard through to take the win.

That blew the lid off the ‘team orders’ can of worms which remains an area that is difficult to police.

The simmering tensions between Webber and Vettel will only serve to delight Alonso who is coming up quickly in the Red Bull’s rear-view mirrors.

It was Alonso’s first win of the year and moves him to within 12 points of Webber, 92 in arrears of Vettel, and three ahead of Hamilton and Jenson Button who are tied in fourth.

And despite playing down his chances of catching Vettel, it is worth noting that Alonso found his form around the same time last year, winning four of seven races to take the lead in the championship before Vettel won the title in the final grand prix.

“Our championship hopes are very difficult,” said Alonso, who began the race from third on the grid.

“The only thing we can do is to try to win every race and be aggressive.

“We know the gap is massive, we just need to try and win every weekend.

“The team is improving a lot.”

It had looked like it would be a routine one-two for Red Bull as Vettel got the jump on pole sitter Webber at the start.

Even under leaden skies and with a shower 30 minutes before the race leaving some parts of the track dry and others wet, the Red Bulls looked a class apart.

Hamilton and Button entertained the home crowd overtaking Alonso and Massa respectively.

But once Alonso re-took Hamilton in the visibly slower McLaren, he was free to chase Vettel.

The german’s unfortunate mix-up in the pits handed Alonso the chance he craved and, in typical fashion, the Spaniard seized the opportunity.

Vettel admitted the pit stop was not necessarily the root cause of his defeat but was wise enough to acknowledge that Ferrari are back in the game.

“Everything went according to plan initially,” Vettel said of the pit stop. “Three tryes went on apart from the left rear. It went on but it wasn’t tight.

“I lost a lot of time out on the circuit.

“Ferrari had a very good race. You have to respect that and not think that it (losing) was because of a mistake.

“Ferrari and Fernando were very competitive today.”

Vettel may by cocksure enough to rile his team-mate, but he knows that not respecting Alonso will only fuel the fiery Spaniard’s determination on the track.

Massa was fifth with Mercedes’s Nico Rosberg coming through to take sixth. Sergio Perez, Nick Heidfeld, Michael Schumacher and Jaime Alguersuari rounded out the top 10.

Sadly for the thousands of ‘home’ supporters who had packed the Silverstone stands, there was little to shout about on a British front.

It was another miserable grand prix for Button who retired in the garage after a pit-stop error, while Hamilton was forced to conserve his fuel and give up on a fight for second place, before just about holding on to fourth.

Yorkshire’s Marussia Virgin Racing cars of Timo Glock and Jerome D’Ambrosio came home 16th and 17th respectively.