It was all looking so easy. Too easy, some said. Jenson Button was going to cruise to his maiden World Championship, winning race after race in the all-conquering Brawn GP rocket ship. But the picture and the outlook for the remaining eight races of the Formula One season is changing and at the Nürburgring last night you could feel that sinking feeling around the Brawn camp.

That is because, for the third race in this campaign and, more importantly, the second grand prix in a row, the Brawn cars of Button and his team-mate, Rubens Barrichello, were comprehensively beaten by the Adrian Newey-designed Red Bulls of Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel. The defeat was to lead to an astonishing attack by the Brazilian on Brawn for “making” him lose the race.

After wins in China and at Silverstone for Vettel, this time it was Webber who took the spoils in a brilliant drive that will have done much to confound the sceptics who said that the popular Australian could not deliver when it matters.

While Webber was able to celebrate his first grand-prix victory at his 130th attempt and another milestone in his comeback from a broken leg suffered in a cycling accident last November, Button and Barrichello could do no better than finish fifth and sixth.

The pair had been outperformed and the team out-thought by Red Bull and the strain was obvious. Within minutes of the finish, Barrichello railed at the way his team had, he believed, thrown away the race with a three-stop strategy that did not work.

“I’m terribly upset with the way things have gone today because it was a very good show of how to lose a race,” the Brazilian said. “I did everything I had to do. I had to go first into the first corner and that’s what I did.

“Then they \ made me lose the race, basically. If we keep going on like this, then we’ll end up losing both championships \ and that would be terrible. To be honest, I wish I could just get on a plane and go home now. I don’t want to talk to anyone in the team because it would be a lot of blah, blah, blah and I don’t want to hear that.”

After the race the atmosphere in the garage was tense. There was no immediate sign of Button, and Ross Brawn, the team principal, unusually declined initial opportunities to discuss an afternoon that has convinced many that this title race could yet go all the way to the final contest of the season, at the new £150 million track in Abu Dhabi. Maybe this is not all bad, however. The last thing even Button’s most fervent supporters would wish for is that their man drives uncontested to an almost worthless title; he wants to fight for it and Brawn certainly have a battle on their hands now.

That said, the 29-year-old from Frome, Somerset, retains a handsome 21-point lead over Vettel in the championship and weather conditions in Germany, where it was cool but stayed dry (much as it was at Silverstone three weeks ago), again did not favour the Brawn car. Against that, the growing self-belief in the Red Bull camp must be recognised. They have developed a fast car and made it faster, their drivers are in form and they believe that they can compete with their rivals on any circuit and in any weather.

It was an absorbing and intricate contest at the forest track in the Eifel hills on a day during which Webber, sitting on pole for the first time, almost threw away his golden chance within metres of the start when he lurched across the track to shut out Barrichello and ended up banging wheels with the Brazilian’s car.

That moment of impetuosity cost him a drive-through penalty. But such was his pace — together with Heikki Kovalainen, of McLaren Mercedes, causing a traffic jam when running in third place in the early stages — that the Australian was able to take his penalty and win.

“It is an incredible day for me,” an emotional Webber said. “I wanted to win so badly after Silverstone. After getting pole I knew I was in a good position to win the race. I thought the only thing that could beat me or test me even more was the rain, but that held off. I lost Rubens off the start, I thought he had gone to the left but he went right and I banged into him.”

Webber added that his race engineer, Ciaron Pilbeam, “kept me calm” after he had taken his penalty. He also joked that the biggest problem for Red Bull now was building a trophy cabinet at their factory at Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire.

The start was full of incident, with Lewis Hamilton in the other McLaren coming out of it among the worst. Running with his power-boost on into the sharp right-hander from fifth on the grid, he was tapped from behind by the front wing endplate on Webber’s car and he ended up going wide at the corner and with his car crippled by a puncture to his right rear tyre. The world champion was thus relegated to last from the first lap and was the last to finish, in eighteenth place.

Elsewhere in the mêlée, Vettel again showed his frailty at the start and was quickly engulfed in the charge to the first corner, dropping from fourth to eighth, from where he and his team did well to fight back.

Ferrari have been bit-part players this season and Felipe Massa has been the better of their drivers. In Germany he produced a fighting drive from eighth to claim the third spot on the podium. Kimi Raikkonen, his team-mate, was involved in a crash with Adrian Sutil, the Force India driver, who was in an improbable second at the end of his first stint, and the Finn retired halfway through the race.

Leading positions (60 laps): 1, M Webber (Aus, Red Bull Renault) 1hr 36min 43.310sec; 2, S Vettel (Ger, Red Bull Renault) 1:36:52.562; 3, F Massa (Br, Ferrari) 1:36:59.216; 4, N Rosberg (Ger, Williams Toyota) 1:37:04.409; 5, J Button (GB, Brawn Mercedes) 1:37:06.919; 6, R Barrichello (Br, Brawn Mercedes) 1:37:07.798; 7, F Alonso (Sp, Renault) 1:37:08.166; 8, H Kovalainen (Fin, McLaren Mercedes) 1:37:41.402; 9, T Glock (Ger, Toyota) 1:37:44.710; 10, N Heidfeld (Ger, BMW Sauber) 1:37:45.210.

How they stand

Leading World Championship positions

Drivers: 1, Button 68pts; 2, Vettel 47; 3, Webber 45.5; 4, Barrichello 44; 5, Massa 22. Other British: 11, L Hamilton (McLaren Mercedes) 9.

Manufacturers: 1, Brawn Mercedes 112pts; 2, Red Bull Renault 92.5; 3, Toyota 34.5.