Webber gives Australia a win to celebrate

By Alan Baldwin

NUERBURGRING, Germany (Reuters) - Australia will have at least one win to celebrate when Mark Webber joins captain Ricky Ponting and the Ashes cricket team for dinner on Monday.

The Red Bull driver ended his country's long wait for a Formula One triumph in Germany on Sunday, Australia's first since Alan Jones in 1981.

Webber had hoped to toast a double victory with Ponting but England thwarted what would have been a winners' dinner by holding Australia to a draw in the first test of the Ashes series in Cardiff.

The driver's success, in his 130th race, marked a remarkable recovery for a man who only last November was lying in a hospital bed with a badly broken right leg after a cycling accident in Tasmania.

Nine races on, still with a pin in his leg, the Aussie ironman is just 1.5 points behind German team mate Sebastian Vettel and third in the championship.

Years of pent-up frustration came pouring out as he crossed the finish line and let rip with an unrestrained show of raw jubilation.

Already seen as one of the sport's unluckiest racers, he had been second three times already this season and now finally he was first.

BRABHAM TRIBUTE