Mark Webber stood defiant on Sunday after ignoring repeated orders not to try to overtake Red Bull teammate Sebastian Vettel in the closing laps of the British Grand Prix.

The Australian, who finished third, openly recognized he had disobeyed his angry employers in fighting the championship leader for second place behind Ferrari's race winner Fernando Alonso.

"Of course I ignored the team as I want to try and get another place. Seb was doing his best and I was doing my best," he said.

Red Bull principal Christian Horner told reporters he would be having a private word with his driver, who is out of contract at the end of the year, and reminded him that the team always came first.

"I can understand that sometimes a driver may be frustrated with an instruction, but my responsibility is to ensure that the team optimizes its results," he added. "There would have been absolutely no benefit in both cars coming back on a tow truck.

"We didn't stop them racing at the start. There comes a point in the race where it would be absolute stupidity to allow them to jeopardise it. We'd have looked pretty stupid if they'd both ended up in the fence."

For the second year running, the 34-year-old Webber found himself in the eye of a storm at Silverstone after last season beating Vettel and declaring his efforts to be "not bad for a number two".

This time, he had started on pole but lost out into the first corner and spent the rest of the race chasing Vettel's exhausts.

After being told to "maintain your position", he was asked whether he now felt like a number two again. "Not really. I just want to race to the end," he replied.

"Of course they (the team) want the points, but I also need to try and get some more as well."

Webber said the order had not gone down well. "I am not fine with it," he said. "No...If Fernando retires in the last lap we are battling for the victory so I was fine until the end," he said.

"I don't want to crash with anyone, but that was it. I tried to do my best with the amount of conversation I had; one-way conversation obviously as I wasn't talking back too much."

Vettel started the day 77 points clear of Webber in the championship, with the two effectively fighting for three points. He ended it still second, but 80 ahead.

The two collided famously in Turkey last year while fighting for the lead, allowing McLaren to snatch a one-two finish, but Webber was a genuine title contender then.

This year the Australian has yet to win a race or lead a lap and is de facto the number two to the reigning champion who has won six of nine races and been on pole position for seven of them.

"At the end of the day the team championship is every bit as important as the drivers' championship to us, and we risked giving away 33 points today in the last three laps by allowing our drivers to fight it out," said Horner.

"As we've seen previously, that can have dire consequences."