by Mark Webber
Some of that feeling spilled over into my decision to help my young fellow Aussie Will Power when he needed someone to give him wings of his own, racing in Europe before going on to really make the grade in the United States. More recently I’ve been taking a close interest in young New Zealander Mitch Evans as he finds his way in Europe. While they still need to possess that raw hunger, drive and determination, it seems only logical that young drivers should learn from what I achieved or how I coped with all those setbacks on the way through. David Campese, just to repeat the clearest example, was trying to give a young Aussie bloke wings when he helped me all those years ago. In motor racing and elsewhere I want to give something back in my own modest way in terms of helping people realise their potential. The word ‘can’t’ is not really on: encouraging people to understand that, accept it and then act accordingly is a very rewarding thing to do and see.
In certain cases success comes only if you are prepared to put your reputation – your own self-respect – at risk. Think Michael Schumacher at La Rascasse back in 2006 when he deliberately ‘parked’ his car in qualifying for the Monaco GP after he messed up his own lap. More recently, Seb exposed a side of himself that was at odds with his cheerful, boyishly charming image with that egotistical, Numero uno forefinger gesture to the cameras after every pole, every victory. The public rarely see F1 drivers with their helmets off, which is why I removed mine on my slow-down lap at my final F1 race in Brazil. It’s really only the men on the podium the fans get a good look at, and I thought Seb repeatedly shoving his finger in front of the camera could have a negative effect, not just on how he was perceived by the fans but, more importantly in my eyes, by other elite sportspeople. You want to earn their respect. You do that when you win with sincerity, style and grace, the way Roger Federer always has.
The finger gesture culminated in the booing after Malaysia 2013, but that was just one of several tricky podium situations with Seb when he was given a hostile reception, even as the Grand Prix winner. Monza in 2013 was the worst, with at least 25,000 spectators beneath the podium. John Surtees, the 1964 Ferrari World Champion, and Jean Alesi (another ex-Ferrari driver) were trying to conduct the podium ceremony; I could see John was having difficulty containing a crowd that was threatening to spoil the presentation of the trophies, so I asked Jean to try to bring the situation under control.
Passions were running high that day: neither of the local Milan soccer teams, Inter and AC, were playing that weekend so the F1 crowd was bigger and more vocal than usual. In the post-race press conference I said I thought the hostility shown towards Seb was too much on the day. At the same time I was disappointed to see Red Bull Racing doing a very good job of convincing themselves that the booing was because of how successful Seb had been. Everyone knew that wasn’t the reason at all: the team could have done a lot more to help Seb manage his antics out of the car and the public’s perception of him.
Going back to helmets, it was interesting that the FIA decided to ban changes to their colour-schemes in 2015. Seb was one of the biggest culprits when it came to changing his, and when he turned up at the 2010 British Grand Prix with a helmet design featuring mug-shots of ‘his’ boys, the members of his crew, we thought it was a tad inappropriate. Everyone heaped praise on him for showing how much he thought of them. Although it was a nice touch it left me in an awkward position with the boys on my car asking when I was going to do the same. I’m a no-nonsense sort of bloke so it never crossed my mind that I needed to show how much I valued the boys in such a public manner! The team didn’t seem to be unduly concerned; in the end Seb satisfied everyone by putting the entire team on his helmet at the next British GP!
On another occasion, Seb showed just how far he was willing to go to when he crashed and damaged his front wing in practice at Suzuka in 2012. Christian told me Seb promptly forked out the money for a private plane to fly a new wing out from the Red Bull Racing factory with team personnel on board still working on it. It was probably a 300-grand exercise! Impressive – but it makes you wonder how the discussion to do just that first arose! It’s an extreme length to go to but this is F1 and there are championships to be won!
I had difficult moments with Seb, but then the camaraderie with my fellow F1 drivers in general was never particularly strong. Maybe we’ve become rather blasé about the safety of our sport and we don’t have the same level of respect for what we are doing against each other week in, week out as they did in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s when fatalities were more commonplace. You placed a lot more value on friendships when you feared they might be short-lived. The layout of the paddock doesn’t exactly encourage F1 fraternising either. As the motor-homes became more palatial, you would simply walk between those giant structures and the cars in the garage, work with your team and go home. It was quite rare to find a driver somewhere else in the paddock chatting to another team or having dinner there.
But I always got on well with David Coulthard, Fernando Alonso, Jenson Button and Robert Kubica. I first came across Alonso in 2000 when I raced him in Formula 3000. He was extremely young and had a lot of puppy-fat on board! I think we naturally had a bit of respect for one another as we were both driving for fairly average teams at the time and winning races and scoring podiums. From what I know of Fernando, his upbringing in rural Spain has similarities to mine in Australia. It takes a long time to gain his trust. We talked to each other at race weekends and sat together at drivers’ meetings – to be fair, the media probably portrayed a stronger relationship than we actually had. We played a bit of tennis when we were testing or at fly-away Grands Prix where we might be staying in the same hotel for a week. Our friendship and mutual respect grew more when we started talking about me joining him at Ferrari and more recently his desire to compete with Porsche at Le Mans in 2015. Neither story was ever leaked to the media – they were always a good six months behind what was actually happening! Fernando is a shy bloke and not super-confident in himself out of the car but put him in a race car with his heart rate up and you’d struggle to find a better racing driver anywhere in the world.
I’ve known Jenson Button for a long time and we’re from a similar generation. JB’s had a phenomenal career; he’s a tenacious bastard. It’s funny how fitness was a chore and a challenge for him at the start of his F1 career but when he had a very uncompetitive car in 2008 he took up triathlon racing. I think it kept his hunger, self-drive and motivation going. We got a bit closer at the end of my career as we’d both grown up a bit and could see things differently. We spent a great few days in Tokyo between the 2013 South Korean and Japanese Grands Prix; I remember having breakfast the next morning with his dad, John, and whiling away a couple of hours talking about how the sport had changed and how JB and I had changed even within our own careers. Ann, Dad and I were shattered when John Button passed away at the start of 2014. The last thing he said to me at my final Grand Prix in Brazil was that he’d see me at Le Mans as he was planning to come to the race. I know Jenson has felt his dad’s loss immensely but Ann and I have always admired the supportive, tightly knit group of family and friends around him, including his now wife Jessica and Mikey Collier, his trainer.
Like Fernando Alonso, Robert Kubica – the only Pole ever to win a Grand Prix, which he did in Canada in 2008 – was one of the few other drivers I felt I could relate to on a genuinely personal level. There were a lot of similarities between Robert and me. He got to F1 in the hardest possible way, and he had to leave his native country of Poland to do it. We were both tall, which brought problems in its wake in the car, and like me he had no time for any of the fun-fair stuff in the paddock, so we always had something to talk about.
Robert was – still is – a real warrior and he had an unbelievable talent. He was a tough prick, I have to say, and he deserved everything he got, except the shocking accident in February 2011 that nearly killed him and cut short his F1 career. It happened when Robert was rallying for fun on the Italian Riviera and it was staggering to
realise how close he must have come to losing his life when a piece of guardrail pierced the entire length of his Skoda. We visited him in hospital, where he had endured seven hours of surgery on his hand and arm injuries, and it was horrible to see him in bed there. Of course I could relate to all of that, but he was so gaunt, so downcast – he broke down a little and it all affected Ann quite badly, seeing someone she knew looking so vulnerable and distraught. I remember having dinner with Robert at Monza earlier when he told me he was already disillusioned with F1 and how much he loved his rallying. He got some of his pace notes out and the passion in him was obvious. I believe he would have gone on to win the world title, in fact probably more than once, and I’m pretty sure looking at the man in the mirror would never have troubled Robert.
The new order of F1 is currently led by 2014 world champion Lewis Hamilton. While I might not have much in common with Lewis, we’ve always got on well and I think he is proving his worth as a world champion in and out of the car.
There is no doubt that in his early years Lewis’s father Anthony played a massive part in shaping his career and getting him going. Anthony also drove some pretty heavy principles and disciplines into his son. Lewis was very quickly onto a rocket-ship and it was an almost vertical trip with McLaren. I think for Lewis’s first few years there he was breathing, eating, drinking the team, living in Woking, no distractions, and that was evident by the incredible start to his F1 career. The media focus on him in the UK was massive and so was the pressure. Young sportspeople’s biggest challenge is understanding themselves as human beings and steering clear of all the back-slappers. Lewis did go through some tough years as a person when there was a lean patch after his initial success. But he seems to be in a much better place now and more comfortable with who he is. He’s a brave guy; put him in an environment where he has people believing in him and team harmony, and he’s a very handy operator. I like his story, where he came from, and how he got to F1.
One of the young guns most likely to challenge Lewis for world titles in the future is Daniel Ricciardo and it’s great to see the Aussie F1 tradition continuing in such a talented pair of hands. I remember just after he’d been announced as a Toro Rosso driver we invited Dan and his mum, Grace, out for dinner to celebrate Australia Day when we found out he was living fairly close to us and they would be on their own that night. Dan’s from the big Italian community in Perth, Western Australia, and we had a big Ricciardo family dinner one night at the Stag, the pub-restaurant Ann used to own. Dan’s father, Joe, has his own great story about how he came over to the UK and worked in the motor-sport industry as a mechanic for various junior formula teams, which sowed the seeds for Dan’s racing career.
I arranged for my physio Roger Cleary to work with Dan in the lead-up to his first F1 test to ensure that he got through it in the best physical shape possible. Rog rang me up after the first day and said that Dan was smoked but although he was tired and sore they managed to get him through the second day. The cars back then were a lot more physically draining and harder to hang onto for a long period of time than they are now. Joe rang me up afterwards to say thank you. It was an important 48 hours for Dan to get through and to have a good little medical team there was only going to help him. It’s all turned out very well for him, hasn’t it? I was genuinely happy for Dan when he got the nod to move up to the senior Red Bull team for 2014. As another graduate of the Red Bull Junior Program, he fitted that team like a glove. What he went on to achieve during his first year there was sensational. Winning Grands Prix is not easy so to have three victories under his belt already bodes extremely well for his future. Not only does he have some old-fashioned qualities I’m a fan of, he is a breath of fresh air for F1.
So what makes a good Formula 1 driver? As with most sports it’s down to mind management and composure under pressure. All drivers have the ability to operate in different conditions in a tight envelope of performance month after month, year after year. Consistency is a must, as is being able to concentrate on the task in hand for a long period of time. We’re all competitive, but the top guys are intent on improving: they like the adrenaline, they get a buzz out of managing a dynamic environment and a rush from getting micro-decisions right. To some degree all drivers are arrogant and egotistical. But they’re also proud of where they come from, especially when they are their country’s sole representative. I always wanted my Australian qualities and values to come through and influence the people I was working with, not just something the media and the fans latched onto.
I think what frustrated some of the older-generation drivers (Michael Schumacher, DC, Fernando, JB, me and to a lesser extent, Lewis and Nico) was the huge shift with the new cars and tyres. Past, present or future, all we drivers want to do is go quicker. But after 2011 lap times took a huge drop, which was disappointing because the new regulations weren’t testing us as we’d like. As an F1 competitor, a purist and huge fan of the sport I wanted a category so far ahead of any other that the drivers are intimidated and respectful of driving cars on the limit. We all felt the same, even Michael on his comeback, but we couldn’t talk openly about not enjoying it as much. We would meet each other at the back of the trucks during pre-season testing and laugh about where the sport was going. It might be increasing the show but the stimulation for us was on the slide. It’s good to hear that the powers-that-be are now looking to make the cars more demanding again for the 2017/18 season – the drivers will respond to that and relish the fresh challenges it throws at them.
As for me, I take great pride in what Bernie Ecclestone said when he learned there was a chance I would go to Ferrari. ‘The old guy [meaning Enzo Ferrari himself] would have loved to have Mark in one of his cars.’ Enzo Ferrari and Jack Brabham were two of the greatest figures in the early decades of the World Championship: self-made men, driven by ambition and self-belief, utterly determined to be the best. Jack gave me endless support and advice over the years and I know he took great pleasure in seeing me win some of our sport’s most coveted Grands Prix. It was partly because of him that I decided not to join Ferrari. When he heard the rumours that I might be, he said he would be very disappointed: for him it was the absolute act of betrayal because they were his motivation – the ones he wanted to beat in his day. It was sad to learn of his death in May 2014.
As I found out when I got to know Bernie a bit more over the years, we share a passion for motorbikes and I love listening to some of his stories about the characters he’s come across. He also has an amazing car collection, which not many people have seen, but Mr E, as he is often known, kindly allowed me to take Dad down for a look. It was a special day for us both. Typical Bernie though: he rang when I got there, said everything was for sale, would I care to make him an offer!
I’ve drawn inspiration from men like Jack Brabham and Steve Waugh for most of my life in sport. I once did, too, from Lance Armstrong. When I first came across him, Armstrong had two faces: one belonged to the multiple Tour de France-winning sports legend, the other to an individual who had faced and beaten the greatest challenge of all, the cancer that seemed certain to kill him.
I met him through a mutual friend, Morris Denton, and the three of us did various bike rides over the years, like the one in Monaco that ended so badly for Morris.
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I didn’t look at F1 as a means to seek fame and fortune. They are happy rewards of the journey I’ve been on, but all I ever wanted was to test myself against the best. For me it’s about representing your country at the highest level and hearing your national anthem on the podium. It was about watching the Prosts, the Sennas and seeing if a kid from Queanbeyan could possibly make it to their level.
Life in the F1 bubble sat uncomfortably with me. As far as I’m concerned, I’m just a normal bloke doing a job that’s a bit different. I’ve travelled the world and seen a lot of amazing places and met a lot of inspirational people. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the privileges that come with my profession. But in the end it’s t
he people who count most.
I was always very touched by the fans who came to support me. I’d see them at particular venues every year of my career without fail and they would always come with a birthday present or a good luck charm. I’ve been sent some incredible drawings and paintings and I appreciate it as the fans’ way of demonstrating their own passion. Some people travelled a long way to see me compete. They’d wait outside our hotels and I’d enjoy hearing them explain their travels. They might give me a photo album they had put together of me competing and it meant something to me to see how passionate they were about the sport and following my career.
Mind you, there are days when you have more patience to deal with being in the public eye, and days when you don’t. I’ve never forgotten Damon Hill telling me a story about his father, Graham, World Champion in 1962 and 1968, dutifully attending a signing session for fans at the British Grand Prix one year. Graham stayed far beyond the allotted time slot but when he finally stood up to leave the bloke who was next in line said to him, ‘I always thought you were a pillock!’
But the Australian race fans were always brilliant and I’d try to accommodate them as much as I could, even if there were occasions in the last few years where I’d strike a deal with security at the end of a busy day: they’d let me out the far end of the paddock and into my waiting car! You might not know, if you haven’t been to Melbourne, that adjacent to the F1 paddock is an enclosure where the die-hard fans assemble each year to get photos and autographs of F1 personnel as they head into the paddock. Woe betide any driver, team principal or celebrity who dares to ignore them: you won’t get far before the booing and hissing starts. It’s always very good-natured and generates a bit of banter among everyone. On the way to the circuit each morning, we used to mimic them calling out my name: ‘MAARRKK, MAARKKK, MAARRK’, it was a dead ringer for a murder of crows!