Webber defends his final decision to conceal injury

Mark Webber has defended his choice not to tell his team about his shoulder injury and insisted it didn't impact him inside the final four races of 2010.

Red Bull boss Christian Horner said Webber's choice not to tell him about the injury was "disappointing".

But Webber said: "The shoulder wasn't causing me a problem, so there was no need to talk about it to any person.

"I was very confident it wouldn't impact my performance inside the automobile. [It] didn't impact my major line of work."

Webber, who eventually completed third inside the drivers' standings as team-mate Sebastian Vettel won the title, revealed he had fractured his appropriate shoulder in a mountain bike accident in his new book, which has just been published in Australia.

The Australian is refusing to blame the injury for his failure to win the title, but the period coincides having a dip in type in which Webber lost his championship lead after which the title.

Webber only told his physio, Roger Cleary, and F1's chief medical officer Gary Hartstein about the injury, keeping his team inside the dark.

Red Bull boss Horner responded inside the Every day Telegraph on Tuesday, saying: "It is obviously disappointing that Mark said absolutely nothing. Our drivers have an obligation to make positive they're fit."

Webber has now explained on his individual web site that if the injury had been much more serious he wouldn't have hidden it.

"If I'd had any problems with it inside the automobile, then obviously I would have told the team," Webber added. "But that wasn't the case.

"I've never missed a grand prix but obviously if I couldn't drive the automobile a) safely and b) on the limit, I would have notified the team."

Webber had cortisone injections just before the races in Japan and South Korea to boring the pain but also downplayed their significance as "absolute precautions".

Webber described the accident in his book, 'Up Front - 2010, A Season To Remember'.

"On the Sunday morning just before (the Japanese Grand Prix at) Suzuka, I got on a mountain bike for the first time given that my accident in Tasmania at the finish of 2008," he wrote.

"I was riding having a great pal of mine. Suddenly, he crashed appropriate in front of me and I had nowhere to go but straight

"I suffered what they call a skier's fracture to my appropriate shoulder.

"Suzuka is a brutal track so it was a blessing that the Japanese climate gave me an enforced rest day on the Saturday (when qualifying was rained off), plus a pre-race injection helped, too.

"In the finish, we got via the weekend all appropriate."

At the time of his latest accident, Webber was leading the planet championship by 11 points from Ferrari's Fernando Alonso and was 21 ahead of Vettel.

He completed second to Vettel in Japan, exactly where the German was only 0.07 seconds more rapidly in qualifying.

But Webber's title hopes took a key hit at the subsequent race in Korea, when he crashed on the second racing lap. Alonso won the race, which leapfrogged him more than Webber inside the championship and into an 11-point lead.

Webber then completed second to Vettel in Brazil just before losing any hope of regaining the lead with an uncompetitive performance at the final race in Abu Dhabi