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Webber speaks on injury

Australian Mark Webber has defended his silence about chasing the 2010 F1 championship with a broken shoulder as "Red Bull did not need to know about it."

The 34-year-old revealed in a book just published in Australia that he fractured the shoulder in a fall from a mountain bike just before the Japanese GP - when he was top of the standings. He finished the season third from the top.

Webber said he told only his physiotherapist and the FIA doctor about the injury he carried through the last four races.

"A little bit of information can be a dangerous thing," he said on his personal website (www.markwebber.com) in response to media reports. "I came off a mountain bike while training between races in Singapore and Japan and an x-ray revealed a small fracture of my right shoulder. I was very confident it wouldn't affect my performance in the car, which is why I didn't tell anyone.

"There was no need. The shoulder wasn't causing me a problem, so there was no need to talk about it to anybody."

He finished second in two of the last four races behind team mate and eventual 2010 Drivers' champion Sebastian Vettel.

'OBVIOUSLY DISAPPOINTING'

"If I'd had issues in the car I would have told the team but that wasn't the case. I've never missed a GP but of course if I couldn't have driven the car a) safely and b) on the limit I would have notified the team."

Red Bull team boss Christian Horner said on Monday he would have wanted to know.

"It is obviously disappointing Mark said nothing," he said at an awards ceremony. "It was an injury that did not appear to have any effect on his performance but all the same it would have been nice to know about it."

It was not the first time Webber has hidden an injury from the team. In late 2008, when he broke a leg in a mountain-bike accident, he neglected to tell the team that he had also broken a shoulder.

Webber said he had not had any surgical operation since the end of the season and the damaged shoulder was not the reason he  missed a post-season tyre test in Abu Dhabi.
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