Something that all Mark Webber fans will be worrying about in 2007 is reliability, coming off one of the most shocking seasons I can remember; every time Mark looked like getting a good result in ‘06 the car would break. The new Renault will be supremely reliable but there must be a question mark over the RB3, Neweys designs have always been a little fragile because he pushes the edge of the design envelope.

With that frame of mind I thought a few facts and figures might be in order. Kimi Raikkonen is generally accepted as the unluckiest driver in F1 when it comes to mechanical failures but does it actually come close to the truth? Us Webber fans may feel Mark is the one with all the rotten luck (even though you’d hardly ever hear commentators or writers mention this - the exact opposite of Kimi) but do the stats back us up? Lets see.

This list I’m about to show is a recording of every drivers % of DNFs that have been attributed to mechanical problems on formula1.com, it was compiled by DOLOMITE at the Planet-F1 forums, it had extra drivers but I’ve filtered it to just leave those who will be racing in 2007:

25% = Mark Webber (22/87)
24% = Kimi Räikkönen (25/105)
23% = Rubens Barrichello (55/236)
23% = Jarno Trulli (38/167)
22% = Nico Rosberg (4/18)
21% = Nick Heidfeld (25/117)
20% = Takuma Sato (14/70)
19% = David Coulthard (41/212)
18% = Fernando Alonso (16/88)
18% = Jenson Button (21/119)
17% = Giancarlo Fisichella (31/179)
17% = Alex Wurz (9/53)
17% = Ralf Schumacher (27/163)
10% = Felipe Massa (7/71)

So it is indeed Mark who comes out on top, not surprising for us, but if you listened to the mob you’d be convinced that Kimi was miles out ahead here, and Mark only had a high DNF ratio because he put it in the fence every race; now you have some hard ammo to counter those ideas. Heres hoping the RB3 is fast AND rock solid.