Aussie Grit

by Mark Webber

  Seb offered me a lift on a private plane he had organised and we flew together from Delhi to Dubai. There were stories circulating in the media at the time about how we weren’t getting on, I was refusing to help Seb with the championship and so on, so the press would have got a big shock if they had seen us travelling together. It was just Seb, his girlfriend Hanna Prater and me. We chatted about personal stuff we’d never had the opportunity to in our working environment, like our love of dogs, how private he is and how he doesn’t much like the limelight. I always enjoyed Hanna’s company too. She had her feet firmly on the ground and was great for Seb. She was fiercely loyal to him, a quality I admired in her.

  In racing terms 2012 went downhill for me after that: a run of 23 straight race finishes came to an end in Abu Dhabi when I tangled with Romain Grosjean and F1’s first visit to Austin in Texas proved an anti-climax when my alternator failed after 17 laps.

  A great shame, that, as the Circuit of the Americas is one of the few new tracks that can hold its head high among the best F1 has to offer. We retained the Constructors’ Championship that day, but Lewis went and spoilt the party by winning the inaugural Austin race and so denying Seb the drivers’ title for the moment. Austin brought a defining moment for Ann. When she looked across the room and congratulated Marko on the Constructors’ title he simply dismissed her. Clearly the only title Marko was really interested in winning was the Drivers’ Championship.

  I was immensely proud of my contribution to another Constructors’ success. You may be on your own out there, you may want to beat your teammate more than anyone else around you, but F1 remains a team sport in name and there is an enormous number of people who make it possible for two drivers to go out and chase the glory on a Sunday afternoon.

  At the final race in Brazil, Seb and I were out-qualified by the McLarens; we started from the second row and I did what a racing driver is supposed to do – try to get off the line as fast as possible, position the car for the first corner and start racing. That meant getting away in front of Sebastian as I was ahead of him on the grid, which I did, and then all hell broke loose a couple of corners later when the whole world sat in his cockpit through the magic of on-board cameras and watched as almost an entire Grand Prix field went past him – while he was facing the wrong way!

  I had absolutely no part in his drama. He had turned across Bruno Senna’s Williams, which was later called a first-lap mishap. But he claimed afterwards that the main reason he was in a position to have an accident in the first place was that he had been squeezed by me at Turn 1! ‘The angle became worse and worse,’ was how my teammate put it, ‘I didn’t want to lose my front wing so I dropped down to first gear and lost both momentum and positions.’

  Red Bull Racing management took exception to the fact that I didn’t let Sebastian come down the inside, but you just don’t risk that kind of manoeuvre at that stage of a race. Never mind that Seb had fought back for sixth place and enough points to beat Alonso to the title, Marko spouted off about me in the Red Bull in-house magazine, Red Bulletin, over the winter break. Enough’s enough: we told Christian that the man was now persona non grata and I don’t think we ever spoke again! On the other hand, Mr Mateschitz himself told me I didn’t have to move over for Sebastian – he should be able to look after himself.

  While Sebastian was taking his third title the season ended in anti-climax for me when that chaotic Brazilian race finished behind the safety car and I was off the Interlagos podium for the first time since 2008. I was sixth overall in the championship, my worst finish in the final five years that I raced with Red Bull.

  15

  Finishing Strongly

  BEFORE THE START OF MY FINAL SEASON IN F1, A FOUR-YEAR marathon came to an end: in December 2012 the last piece of metal was removed from my right leg, a 40-centimetre titanium rod that forced me to relax the Webber training regime for a brief period. Although it wasn’t long before I began to concentrate on my fitness once again, my thoughts were increasingly turning away from Formula 1. Only those closest to me knew it, but this was to be my last season.

  I had concluded my negotiations with Porsche and signed a contract for 2014 that would allow me to continue racing at the highest possible level after Formula 1. Ann had left the decision completely up to me. Perhaps if she had had her way I would have called a halt altogether, but I wanted to keep racing and she accepted that. While I wanted to make the most of my last season, I was also looking forward to life away from the goldfish bowl of the F1 paddock.

  I set myself the task of learning to fly a helicopter, having had a fascination with aviation for many years. It was a daunting prospect at first: although I was always going to be fine with the practicalities of flying, studying for exams was another matter as it had never been my forte at school. I had to work hard to get the radio communications section of the licence right, and I have never done so much reading in my entire life! I was left wondering what might have happened if they’d taught this stuff at Karabar High. Thankfully I managed to get to grips with all the theory and I’ll admit I was very proud when I eventually qualified. I have to say that flying helicopters is not a pastime that sits entirely comfortably with Ann and I think she’ll always be a lot more nervous about me doing that than racing cars!

  Another factor that had influenced my decision to leave F1 was the fact my parents weren’t getting any younger. I was very conscious that Mum and Dad, my sister Leanne and her young family had taken a back seat for most of my adult life. I wanted to redress the balance and find the time to enjoy special moments and experiences with them. Of course Dad had mixed feelings about my retirement – we had come a long way from Queanbeyan together – but he understood that bringing an end to the F1 adventure was my call, and I know he and Mum respected me for bowing out with my head held high. In Dad’s words: ‘How could we be disappointed? Our son was the first Australian to win a Grand Prix since Brabham and Jones, he enjoyed a wonderful 12 years at the pinnacle of world motor racing and he took us along for the ride with him.’

  *

  Back in the goldfish bowl Marko was making some pretty unflattering remarks about Red Bull Racing’s Australian driver. According to him, Red Bull had put me in a winning car, then a young kid had come along and beaten me to the prize. He suggested I had a couple of ‘unbeatable’ races each year but couldn’t keep it up, and that I couldn’t handle pressure.

  All I could say to that was that everyone in our sport has their own agendas and it was clear I had never been a part of Marko’s. In a script like that you can read all sorts of things between the lines, but as far as I was concerned it was of very little consequence. My decision was made; Marko’s attitude would soon be a thing of the past. There was only one way to go about the season: do my absolute best.

  As well as an old enemy, going into my 12th season I had a new colleague to work with. My long-time race engineer Ciaron Pilbeam had had enough of Red Bull Racing and was off to Lotus. In his place came Simon Rennie, so we needed to get to know each other’s way of working pretty quickly. With a new suite of regulations waiting to transform the face of F1 at the start of 2014, the 2013 RB9 could be seen as the last in Adrian Newey’s sequence of all-conquering Red Bull Racing cars.

  Early in the season, with new Pirelli tyres using softer compounds all round, the car would struggle, perhaps because of its aerodynamic characteristics, although Sebastian managed to win four times in the period before the mid-season break. But when there was a switch mid-year to the 2012 constructions with the 2013 compounds it became practically unbeatable. Unfortunately Seb’s car was beating mine as well! From the Belgian Grand Prix onwards Seb embarked on a run of nine straight Grand Prix wins, a season’s total of 13, and he won his fourth title by a country mile at Suzuka with four races to spare.

  *

  It didn’t all start with ‘Multi 21’, but that’s probably as good a place as any to finish on the subject of my differences with Red Bull Racing.

 
Sebastian arrived in Malaysia in 2013 after a podium in Melbourne, but in Sepang we were very concerned about our pace. Our Friday race preparation was slow, so we decided to use Saturday’s free practice session to do long runs, which is unusual for us. Pirelli were very pessimistic about the length of the stints we could do: we were very hard on tyres. So we did those long runs on Saturday morning, and tried some highly unusual set-ups while we were about it.

  Sunday’s track temperature was six or seven degrees cooler. A shower just before the start meant we began the 56-lap race on Pirelli’s intermediate tyres. Thanks to a good call from Simon I got my cross-over, switching to the right tyres at the right time, spot-on. Seb, who had started from pole, changed too early and soon we were running 1–2, with my car in the lead. I stayed there through the second round of stops but that’s when the trouble started. As the third round of pit stops neared, I had backed off to take care of my tyres; I didn’t know this at the time, but Sebastian was making a fuss over the radio and had issued an order of his own: ‘Get Mark out of the way, he’s too slow.’

  The team asked if I could lift my pace before the final stop which is a normal request, and I obliged. This is where it got tricky for the team as they were trying to keep Seb ahead of the Mercedes, so they pitted him first. Normally the lead car, in this case me, would have priority over the pit stop sequence. Once the stops were done, Seb had not only gained time on the Merc but the powerful strategy of pitting earlier meant that he was straight into DRS range of me.

  The team were happy that their strategy had protected him against the Mercs and so we got the infamous ‘Multi 21’ message to turn the engines down and bring the cars home. It wasn’t always beneficial to us to race hard against each other because that was too hard on the tyres and in Malaysia we had had that very discussion beforehand. I knew within two laps that Seb was going to take matters into his own hands despite the reassurance over the radio that the race was mine.

  I started defending, but as a result of our respective qualifying runs he had new tyres and I didn’t. My attempt in Q2 was too conservative so I did an extra lap: that meant I was on a three-lap-old set while Seb’s were brand-new. Maybe he felt he should be able to use those tyres to the best effect rather than be told to back off? Whatever his thinking was, when he overtook me I wasn’t so much angry as very sad that the team had reached this sorry state.

  With Seb’s victory done and dusted, Adrian Newey came up to me saying, ‘We told him, we told him.’ Seb himself was very keen to talk to me before we went up to the podium but I didn’t want to listen. When we got there the interviewer, Martin Brundle, found himself in a very awkward position. That was when I made my remark about Sebastian making his own decision to disobey orders and race and then being given protection, as usual, by the senior management at Red Bull Racing.

  After the podium ceremony Sebastian said he wanted to give the win back to me: he said it had been a complete f#*k-up. We knew by then that the official FIA press conference was going to be very awkward for all concerned. The team PR people couldn’t get to us before we went in there. Sitting next to Seb was very uncomfortable. He had executed the whole thing and now he had to deal with it. He said he would call me in Australia, where I was going after that race. But it was no surprise when I got a call from Dietrich Mateschitz instead.

  He was furious about what had happened and what it had done to Red Bull’s image. He asked me to give him both a verbal and a written account of what had happened, which I did. He also asked me to tell him what had gone wrong in Melbourne: he was very curious about the technical issues I had faced before the start of the race. It was clear he wasn’t very happy about it, as Melbourne was a race he would have liked me to have won.

  The next time I saw Sebastian was on the Thursday of the race weekend in China, and I said we needed to talk. The ensuing conversation was the most disappointing moment of our entire relationship. He said he was pissed off by what I had said on the podium in Malaysia, that while he respected me as a driver he had no respect for me as a person.

  That was a heavy line for me. I simply said, ‘Then our relationship is in trouble. That’s it.’

  I had clung to the belief that we might sort things out between us but I couldn’t help thinking someone must have got in his ear to cause such an about-face. Christian later insisted it was all of Sebastian’s own doing, his justification being that it was payback for Silverstone 2011 and Brazil 2012. I could have gone back a lot further than that!

  From then on I knew the end of the season was going to be difficult. Drivers are such beacons within a team: the tensions between us would put stress on all the other areas of Red Bull Racing.

  Perhaps Dietrich could have sorted it out, but he had plenty of other things on his radar and in any case he ought to have been able to trust the people he’d put in place to handle the situation. He had told me he would have liked to handle things differently even back in 2010. I trusted Adrian, but Christian was in an awkward position having to keep Marko happy, and it turned out that the protection for the other driver was there. It might have been different had we had really strong management. Sebastian and I both tested the system and when your drivers are fighting each other for race wins the pressure on all concerned is that much greater.

  When Ann later pressed Christian about why the team had never reprimanded Seb or issued any punishment for the ‘Multi 21’ incident, he admitted that the team had received a two-page letter from Seb’s lawyer a few days after the Malaysian race stating that they were in breach of his contract by giving him ‘an unreasonable instruction/team order’. Red Bull Racing clearly felt they were in a very awkward position because they ended up paying first-place bonus money to both drivers and the figures weren’t small either!

  *

  With the Malaysian mess behind us, saying ‘Au revoir’ to Monaco with my fourth F1 podium there was very pleasing. It happened on a day when my former teammate Nico Rosberg emulated his famous dad, Keke, one of F1’s greatest street-fighters, who won there in 1983 for Williams. Coincidentally I was behind Nico again when I finished second at Silverstone, my fifth F1 podium at another track which has always been kind to me, and I had one of my more enjoyable moments of the year when I went public with my decision to quit Grand Prix racing.

  I had been to Austria two days earlier where I signed my Porsche contract and met with Mr Mateschitz at Hangar 7. I told him that I was going to announce my decision to move to endurance racing at a circuit, Silverstone, that had always felt like home to me. Typically, he had wished me well. In fact he gave me the impression he was disappointed, though maybe he felt that was the right thing to do, but he said he always felt sad when the gladiators dropped out of the sport. He liked having real men racing his cars.

  Prior to making the announcement, Ann had checked my RBR contract with my lawyer, who confirmed that I was under no obligation to inform the team; I only had to notify them in the event of my switching to another F1 team. So on the Thursday morning, 10 minutes before Porsche issued their press release, I phoned Christian Horner and told him my F1 days were over. It was another crack in my relationship with Red Bull Racing but I was happy to wear that. I didn’t want this to be done on anyone’s terms but mine.

  Another track that has been kind to me, the Nürburgring, had a nasty surprise in store this time. I felt, over the weekend, that this was a place where I could challenge for that elusive 10th Grand Prix victory – until lap 9 and my first pit stop. As I tried to accelerate away from the box, the right rear wheel came off my car. It bounced high and hit one of the FOM (Formula One Management) television cameramen on duty in pit lane. In comparison to what had happened to the poor man (who was not too seriously injured, as it turned out), the two-and-a-half minutes I lost in pit lane didn’t matter. In the context of a race, though, they were terminal.

  I made eight podium appearances in 2013 but unfortunately none of them came at another favourite place of mine, Spa-Francorchamps. Two
practice starts on my way to the grid proved alarming and sure enough, the clutch bite point was all over the place and I bogged down at the start. I’d have loved to finish higher than fifth: driving a Formula 1 car round that great circuit is one of the things I miss about Grand Prix racing. The same applies, to a certain extent, to Monza, where I at last got on the podium for the first time in F1 alongside Vettel and Alonso. You see the fans hanging out of the trees in the royal park, you see full grandstands, you see kids with their grandparents – to me that’s just wonderful.

  Being on the podium again at Suzuka was brilliant, too – especially after the build-up! It began on the Sunday night post-race in Korea and ended with six Formula 1 drivers doing mock pit stops on taxis on the main streets of downtown Tokyo. Our bender involved me, Fernando, Lewis, Felipe, Jenson and Nico Rosberg. At some stage, as I recall, we also roped in DC and Martin Brundle. We’d started hooking into it on a private flight between the two venues. I confess that I’ve forgotten now exactly what it was we ended up drinking, but by the end we were stacking up the shot glasses and trying our damnedest to out-do each other. Alonso entered the fray late so we acted like stewards, deemed him to be two laps down and ordered him to neck a few to get himself back on the lead lap! The racing similarities got a bit out of hand – for example, I’ve no idea why Fernando told me at one point that he was coming in for a set of supersofts – but Webber was adjudged to have put it on pole. If you drank 15 of whatever we were drinking you got your name up on the wall so it’s not hard to imagine six competitive guys getting right into it. I was up for another crack on the Tuesday and roped Nico and a few others into it with me! The photographs of us walking into the Suzuka paddock don’t suggest that we’re ready for the gunfight at the OK Corral …