Australian rues traffic and gremlins in battle for sixth.

Mark Webber is convinced that he could have added another point to Red Bull Racing's first haul of the season had it not been for problems lapping backmarkers in the closing stages of Sunday's Malaysian Grand Prix.

After a disastrous appearance in front of his home crowd a week ago, Webber bounced back from further setbacks in practice - notably team-mate David Coulthard's suspension failure that put the entire Red Bull Racing weekend in jeopardy - to score two points for seventh place at Sepang. Despite that, however, the Australian had run as high as fifth, and reckoned he could have finished somewhere between the two had it not been for slower cars.

"I got stuck behind [Takuma] Sato at a crucial point in the race and lost around two seconds, when we should have stayed in front of Heidfeld," Webber reported, having lost out to the German at the second round of pit-stops, "But I'm pleased for everyone at Red Bull and Renault to get two points - it's been a tough start to the year for us and it's great to get the car to the finish today."

Having been promoted to sixth on the grid after both McLarens were penalised for blocking in qualifying, Webber vaulted into fourth as the field negotiated the tight opening turns, and ran comfortably ahead of Melbourne race winner Lewis Hamilton for the best part of two stints.

"The start wasn't fantastic, but we knew a lot of people would be on soft tyres at that point of the race," he revealed, "I got a really good run through turns one and two and came out in fourth position. The first stint went okay, but I struggled a bit during the second stint with poor grip, although we kept trying to chip away at the times."

Knowing that the Briton would eventually move ahead of him, however, the Australian was more focused on the whereabouts of Heidfeld and Fernando Alonso, particularly as the team was having to keep an eye on another fault with the RB4.

"Mark drove a good race, especially as he had the handicap of an air pump issue from very early on, which meant we had to build in quite a large safety margin fuel-wise," team boss Christian Horner confirmed, "This required him to stop earlier than scheduled in order to compensate which, over the course of the race, probably cost us between 12-15secs.

"Unfortunately, Sato didn't move out of the way at a critical point when we were racing with Heidfeld, otherwise I'm sure we would have stayed ahead over the final stop. But it's good to go away from here with some points on the board."