It's a miracle that Mark Webber could survive a crash of the enormity he had in the European Grand Prix with barely a scratch.

A testament to the safety of the modern Formula One car.

But now Webber's going to need something close to another miracle if he's to win this year's F1 world championship.

"I lost some points, but in the end when you're up there (somersaulting through the air over another car at around 300kmh) you're not worried about points," Webber said.

Understandably.

But, little more than a fortnight ago, Webber was joint leader of the championship.

Now he's fourth, with 103 points. Lewis Hamilton has 127, his McLaren teammate Jenson Button 121, and Webber's teammate Sebastian Vettel 115 after winning the European GP at Valencia in Spain.

Each of the four has two wins this season.

Webber said boldly in the hours after Sunday's unscheduled flight: "To be 24 points behind Lewis is nothing when you consider that I scored 50 points in the space of eight days a few races ago."

He was recalling his dominant victories in the Spanish and Monaco GPs.

Since then he's been third in Turkey after the infamous collision with teammate Vettel, fifth in Canada and upside down and into a tyre barrier at Valencia, for a total of 25 points in the past month.

In the same time Hamilton has amassed 68 points, from two wins and a second, Button 51 and Vettel 37.

Although feeling a little tender a day after Valencia - and with the car in which he won in Barcelona and Monte Carlo and and had taken several pole positions wrecked - Webber is raring to go racing again.

Having a shower late on Sunday he thought to himself, "Mate, you're lucky to be in one piece."

But then he told media: "It's the first race (this year) I lose points. I've scored points every (previous) race this year, so now I join all the other drivers in not scoring at every GP.

"I remain incredibly positive. We go on.

"It's half way through the championship - bloody hell, let's get on with it, and I'm looking forward to it."

The Red Bull cars were something of a surprise in Valencia, with Vettel and Webber qualifying on the front row of the grid at a street circuit not expected to have suited the Renault-powered RB6s.

Vettel withstood the McLaren challenge in the race, although somehow Webber was already down in ninth place at the end of the first lap and, after a stop to change tyres, trying to claw his way back among the tailenders when he collided with Heikki Kovalainen's Lotus which sent him into the pirouette that made such startling TV footage.

Once the air got under his car he had been "just a passenger".

It was an experience he had twice in a couple of days a decade ago in a Mercedes sportscar at Le Mans and it would scare the hell out of the bravest human.

Webber was surprised at Valencia that, because of the disparity in their cars - three to five seconds a lap - Kovalainen didn't promptly move aside for him to overtake.

He thought the Finn was "aggressively blocking" him and then was caught out by how early he braked for the upcoming corner - 80 metres earlier than he anticipated.

Kovalainen denies any blame. The pair shook hands in the medical centre.

But Kovalainen's immediate boss, Mike Gascoyne, said: "It's the responsibility of the guy behind to make the overtaking manoeuvre safely. He (Webber) blatantly didn't. Mark's now had two accidents in three races and it's never been his fault."

Something little known is that, because of a strike by French air traffic controllers last Thursday, Kovalainen drove 1200km from Geneva to Valencia in seven hours (averaging more than 170kmh), arriving at 5am Friday - the day practice began.

He was tired throughout the weekend, but claimed that had no impact on his performance in the Lotus cockpit.

Surely debatable.

The Red Bull cars will likely have even more advantage at the venue for next week's British GP, Silvestone, which has more super-fast corners.

But in the lead-up to it, a reality may just dawn.

With the adrenaline pumping in Valencia it may have been easy for Webber to say that Hamilton's 24-point lead is "nothing".

But over the remaining 10 GPs this season the Aussie now needs to outscore Hamilton by an average of 2.5 points a race, Button by 1.9 and Vettel by 1.3.

Doesn't sound much, but in the context of the respective scores of the four top drivers in the championship in the past month - Hamilton average 22.66, Button 17, Vettel 12.33, Webber 8.33 - it is.

And, as we have pointed out in these pages previously, the six points Webber squandered in Melbourne may yet come back to haunt him.

Even if the Australian can return to winning races, Hamilton, Button and Vettel are unlikely to go pointless, at least regularly.

While Red Bull's RB6 cars still have the edge in speed, the McLarens are hot on their heels, reliable, and their drivers remarkably consistent.

Fernando Alonso, the dual world champion who is the only other race winner this season but now struggling to stay in touch with the top four despite the might of Ferrari, recently talked of the world championship being "a stage event" - like a rally or the Tour de France. ''And the final one of those (F1) stages will not come until November in Abu Dhabi," he said.

Someone, not sure who, once said that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

The Valencia crash didn't kill Webber, when it so easily could have.

Now he's got to be strong. Stronger than ever before.

He's playing catch-up.

F1 teams spend obscene amounts of money developing aerodynamics to make cars stick to the track.

Red Bull's technical director Adrian Newey does that job better than anyone.

Now Webber has to keep his car on the bitumen.

There's no points for frequent flying in F1 races.

But it's points that win the championship.

And champions that history remembers.