Mark Webber

May 2010 could well turn out to be a watershed in Mark Webber's career.

Seen by many as the Red Bull's number two driver after the opening four 'long-haul' Formula 1 races, he has dominated since the European races got underway.

He won both the Spanish and Monaco Grands Prix during May and added a third place in Turkey after clashing with his team-mate Sebastian Vettel while battling for the lead.

Those results made him May's EDGE Performer of the Month by a sizeable margin from NASCAR ace Kyle Busch. Lewis Hamilton, Jeff Gordon and Sebastien Ogier completed the top five.

Webber's stock as a driver has never been higher than it is right now. He has, after all, risen to number two in the Castrol Rankings. The 33-year-old Australian has taken a while to get there though.

Ranking Year

His name first began to garner a bit of interest when, aged 19, he won the Formula Ford race that supported Adelaide's final Australian Grand Prix.

That led to an invite to come to Britain and race for the works Van Diemen squad the following season. Second in the British Championship was followed by victory in the prestigious Formula Ford Festival.

Race-winning campaigns in British F3 and in the FIA GT Championship followed, as did a monumental crash in a Mercedes at Le Mans in '99. It was the last time he drove a sportscar.

He settled back into single-seaters in F3000 and finished second in the 2001 championship with Super Nova.

That was enough to get him an F1 race seat at the Minardi team run by fellow Australian Paul Stoddart. The hysterics that followed a fifth place finish on his debut - at, of all places, Melbourne - have become legendary.

After leaving Minardi, the following four years brought spells with Jaguar and Williams, but granted him just a single podium finish - at Monaco in '05.

While the rostrum milestone was overcome, even a switch to Red Bull brought him just one more by the end of '08, his second season with the Austrian-owned team.

For the first time in his F1 career, he was given a race-winning car last year in the shape of the Red Bull RB5, and it finally enabled him to end a 130-race wait for his maiden grand prix victory.

Even more impressive than the win itself - which came in Germany despite an early drive-through penalty - was that just seven months earlier Webber had broken a leg in a cycling accident. His victory was one of true Aussie grit.

Another win followed in Brazil, resulting in a career-best fourth place in the championship and an ascension from outside the Castrol Rankings top 30 at the start of the year to seventh by its end.

This year has been even better. Webber made a solid start, even if he did hand victory to Vettel by failing to spot him in his mirrors in Malaysia.

His Spanish and Monaco wins brought him into a head-to-head title fight with Vettel, the intensity of which probably contributed to the pair clashing in Turkey.

Webber's rescue of third place in that race has not only given him the outright championship lead, but has also brought him onto Vettel's tail in the race for the Castrol Rankings lead.

A victory next time out in Canada could even put him into the top spot for the first time. Now that would be something.