Top ten F1 drivers: Mark Webber [10].

After asking you to vote for your leading drivers from the 2008 Formula 1 World Championship season, the time has come to start the countdown to the driver you voted the top star of 2008.

Over the next ten weekdays, we will be revealing the top ten in reverse order, with the winner being revealed on Friday, 28 November.

More than 45,000 votes were cast in the F1 poll, with each driver's average score out of ten then being calculated to decide the winner.

F1 Driver of the Year - Tenth place:

Name: Mark WebberTeam: Red Bull RacingCar: Red Bull-Renault RB4Wins:0Podiums: 0Pole positions: 0Fastest laps: 0Championship points: 21Championship position: 11th

In the early stages of the 2008 Formula 1 campaign, Mark Webber and Red Bull Racing promised great things, with a run of six consecutive points-scoring finishes from Malaysia to Monaco seeming to have banished the habitual ill-fortune that has dogged the traditionally luckless Aussie's grand prix career.

A solid sixth place in the French Grand Prix at Magny-Cours continued that trend, but the energy drinks-backed outfit's failure to keep development pace with that of its immediate rivals - despite having the undoubted talents of Adrian Newey on the design side - would prove to be costly indeed during the season's second half.

Over the final ten grands prix - from Britain onwards - Webber scored but three more times, each of them a solitary point in Belgium, Italy and Japan. What's more, on two of those occasions his result owed a little to luck, after Timo Glock was penalised at Spa-Francorchamps and S?bastien Bourdais at Fuji, promoting the 31-year-old to eighth place only after the chequered flag had fallen.

That slump saw him slip out of the top ten in the final drivers' standings, and over the closing stages of the campaign even Webber's renowned qualifying prowess seemed unable to rescue Red Bull from the mire into which it had plunged. Not once did the man from New South Wales make it into Q3 in the last four races - and this from a driver who had lined up a superb second at Silverstone (RBR's maiden front row starting spot in the top flight) and third at Monza earlier on in the season.

That he outpaced veteran team-mate David Coulthard on Saturday afternoons by the crushing margin of 16-2 at least went a long way to proving that the lack of pace had been down to the car rather than driver, but for a man in his seventh season in the highest echelon and one with more than 120 grand prix starts under his belt, to not so much as even make the podium was a massive disappointment.

With a new team-mate next year in the form of Italian Grand Prix winner Sebastian Vettel, Webber arguably now stands at the crossroads of his F1 career, and facing a sink or swim scenario. Should he match or beat the young pretender, the man from Queanbeyan may yet enjoy his day in the sun and go on to achieve the great things he has threatened. As departing team-mate Coulthard has warned him, though, seeing off Vettel will be no mean feat.

Tomorrow: Who did you vote ninth in the Driver of the Year poll?