Mark Webber is determined to get to the bottom of the problems which handicapped him at the season-opening Australian Grand Prix.
While Sebastian Vettel dominated on Saturday and Sunday, Webber found himself almost one second off his Red Bull team-mate's qualifying pace and things didn't go much better during the race as he finished a distant fifth.
Webber admits he's still scratching his head over his performance, or lack thereof, at Albert Park.
"The post-race debrief with my engineers went on longer than normal after Sunday's Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne," he wrote in his column for the Australian paper Daily Telegraph.
"We analysed the telemetry in an effort to understand why I struggled in the race relative to my Red Bull Racing team-mate Sebastian Vettel.
"We found a few pointers in the data but we'll need to strip the car down before drawing any conclusions. Only then will we know whether something was broken, or whether there was something fundamentally wrong with the car.
"More than anything, I struggled with a lack of grip. That affected the longevity of my Pirelli tyres because the degradation was much higher on my car than on Seb's. I was forced to make three pitstops during the race, whereas he dominated proceedings with a two-stop strategy.
The major technical talking point over the weekend was the adjustable rear wing and although he didn't benefit much from the Drag Reduction System, Webber says he will reserve judgment.
"I was all over Lewis Hamilton's gearbox during the opening laps and thought the new DRS rear wing would help me overtake him," he wrote.
"As I entered the pit straight on lap three, I utilised the drag-reducing rear wing and it made no difference! OK, I gained on Lewis a little bit, but not by enough to make a pass into Turn 1. From that moment I knew it would be difficult to finish second.
"But we shouldn't give up on the DRS wing yet. The corner on to the pit straight at Albert Park was too quick to enable cars to follow each other closely, due to the way turbulent air affects aerodynamics. It should be a different story in Malaysia, where the corner on to the start-finish straight is a slow hairpin. Extra acceleration afforded by the DRS wing should put us in a position to overtake into turn one. "
