Former F1 star and team boss, Gerhard Berger, has accused Mark Webber of attempting to take out one of his championship rivals in Sunday's Korean Grand Prix.

The Australian's race came to an abrupt end just 18 laps into Sunday's race when he lost control of his car on the wet kerbs and spun across the track hitting the safety barriers and then bouncing back across the track where he collected Nico Rosberg.

"He could have hit the brakes and stopped the car at the wall," Berger told Austria's Servus TV. "He took out Rosberg, but it was the wrong one," he continued. "I think in his mind he would have preferred Alonso or Hamilton."

Asked whether he thought Webber's move was a deliberate act, Berger said: "Yes, I think that's very clear. He goes off and he knows it's over. In this moment you're frustrated and a thousand thoughts go through your head. It's very obvious, you can see his wheels are not locked up. Perhaps he had a brake problem, but I don't think so."

The Austrian team's day went from bad to worse when race leader Sebastian Vettel suffered an engine failure late in the race handing the victory to Fernando Alonso. Austrian Helmut Marko - Red Bull's director of racing - was on hand to console the German when he arrived back at the pits.

Berger, an Austrian, was formerly co-owner of the Toro Rosso outfit along with the Austrian founder of the Red Bull empire whose F1 team, though based in Milton Keynes in the UK, races under an Austrian licence.