During his first stint, Webber had been comfortably running in ninth position after losing a place to Sebastian Vettel off the start. Initially Webber was able to keep his immediate opposition within his sights as Jarno Trulli battled with Kimi Raikkonen and Fernando Alonso for fifth, sixth and seventh ahead of Vettel. However, Trulli then picked up the pace and was able to extend his lead over Raikkonen, while Webber dropped away from Vettel. Webber remained in ninth place before climbing up the order as the first round of pit stops commenced by virtue of running to lap 23. He pitted from third place and rejoined behind Alonso who had been passed by Vettel, but had dropped to 11^thdue to the fact that Glock and Nick Heidfeld had yet to pit.

By going several laps longer, Glock managed to gain a spot to Webber after he pitted, while it was only a matter of time before the quicker Heidfeld was able to overtake Webber.

A few laps later the race was brought under the control of the Safety Car when Glock crashed heavily coming on the home straight, the Toyota driver running wide off the final corner and launching his car. It speared across the track and hit the pit wall heavily before bouncing back across the track as the field came through. Webber was the first car through and although he drove to the left to try and avoid Glock’s out-of-control car and the debris, a puff of smoke from the rear of the RB4 a lap or so later suggested otherwise. He circulated behind the Safety Car for a couple of laps before retiring the car on lap 41.

Said Webber afterwards, “Unfortunately it's becoming a bit of norm as we got beaten off the line again. I lost a position to Vettel immediately although then had a good fight with him on the first lap. Knowing that we were longer than most people in the first stint, we had to try and hang onto them the best we could. I got a bit closer to Vettel and Alonso at the first stop and was looking forward to taking the fight to them around the second round of stops when Glock had a huge crash in front of me and amazingly, a small part of the debris managed to punch a hole in the oil radiator in the engine.

"I informed the team pretty quickly that I had some smoke coming from the back of the car. They continued to assess the situation for the laps behind the Safety Car. There were several reasons why we retired the car; I could have easily got oil on the rear of my tyres and crashed myself, it wasn’t fair to our fellow competitors if I was spraying them with oil, and thirdly and most importantly the engine was destined to fail!  As predicted, it was a difficult venue for us pace-wise, we might have scrapped a point out of it but no more than that.”

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