“Kimi was, I don’t know, drinking some vodka or dreaming, or something down in… I don’t know what the hell he was doing,” fumed the Australian. “He should have been on the right but he’s on the racing line, dreaming. So that really wrecked my rhythm into Stowe.”

Webber had been pleased with his afternoon’s work until that point but the blown final lap left him trying to take the positives from third on the grid behind Brawn GP’s Rubens Barrichello and pole-sitter Sebastian Vettel.

“Well second is the not the greatest position to be starting from here, but obviously I’d like to be on pole,” he said, alluding to his start from P2 last year. “I was happy with every lap I did in qualifying to be honest, except for the last one.

“It was a pretty good lap but I had a big distraction from Kimi who was totally asleep on the back straight, he couldn’t have done better job of distracting me heading into Stowe, he sat on the racing line and he didn’t seem to care (about) what was happening.

“But that’s the frustration put aside. I’m third, I certainly did a good lap and the team has done an incredible job. So there’s a lot of positives but obviously these days we’re aiming a lot higher so it’s easy to get more disappointed.”

Webber’s frustrations are likely to be intensified by Raikkonen’s refusal to accept the blame for compromising the Red Bull driver’s run. “I tried to move to the side as much as I could, so I don't think he lost any time,” the Ferrari driver said.

Safe to say, then, that Webber won’t be the first to buy the Finn a drink at the bar tonight.