Aussie Grit

In the high-stakes world of Formula One, only the fastest make it to the top. Few know this better than Australian Formula One legend Mark Webber. His career in F1 stretched an incredible 12 years, saw him earn 42 podium finishes and triumph in nine races, including twice-winning the crown jewel of F1, the Monaco Grand Prix.

But the road to the top of F1 racing is long and full of deadly twists and strange turns. In his long-awaited Autobiography, Webber tells the incredible true story of the small town pizza delivery boy who climbed the apex of the world’s most dangerous sport. With startling candour, Webber takes us on a thrill ride through the highs and lows of his amazing career, detailing the personal struggles that drove him, revealing the truth at last behind his rivalry with Red Bull Racing teammate Sebastian Vettel, and allowing us access-all-areas into a very private life played out on the public stage.

Filled with anecdotes about the great drivers, epic races and characters of
Formula One,
Mark Webber Aussie Grit
is a fascinating account of a life in
the cockpit of an F1 rocket and the inspiring, no-punches-pulled story of a great,
gritty Australian.

Cover

About
Aussie Grit

Foreword by Steve Waugh

Acknowledgements

Index

About Mark Webber

Also by Mark Webber

Copyright page

H
OW COULD
I
SAY NO TO
M
ARK
W
EBBER, ESPECIALLY WHEN
he was raising funds for various children’s cancer research charities? After all, what he wanted of me sounded like a once-in-a-lifetime adventure – to be helicoptered into the untamed west coast of Tasmania to compete in the inaugural Mark Webber Challenge. Sure, it would take me out of my comfort zone, but I assumed the fitness required for this task was not beyond that of an Australian Test cricketer.

How wrong was I?

Twenty-four hours later, having somehow completed the Challenge, I woke in my Hobart hotel bed in readiness for a pre-game training session with the New South Wales Sheffield Shield team. The very instant I attempted to take my first steps for the day, I experienced a searing pain in my upper hamstrings that quickly cascaded into every nerve-ending in my body. I couldn’t move beyond
a geriatric hobble. I was in a world of hurt with no place to hide. But what at the time seemed like a recipe for disaster in fact became a godsend, because the next day I blazed my way to a swashbuckling century. My legs were still tortured and begging for mercy, so my only option was all-out attack, culminating in adventurous strokeplay and a stream of boundaries. I guess my forced plan B wasn’t a bad option!

That’s the power of Mark Webber. He is a guy you want to be with in the trenches, a man who exudes calm yet has that down-to-earth character that every Aussie can relate to and respect. We have all admired his exploits on the track. Mark’s statistics are extraordinary: 12 years in Formula 1, 215 starts, 13 pole positions, 19 fastest laps, 42 podiums and nine wins. However, these remarkable achievements aren’t the only reason Australians connect with Mark, for he is one of us, a man who has never forgotten his roots, stays true to himself, remains humble and always gives 100 per cent every time he suits up. Throughout his F1 career, we all felt like we knew him and as such we joined him on the journey, celebrating his successes and experiencing the pain of defeat. It was as if he was driving for us all, spreading goodwill and the spirit of Australia around the world. I was a big fan, following his progress from wherever I was in the world and regularly sending text messages, which he always replied to even when the issues of the day were complex and challenging.

Mark has always made himself available to help out my charity, the Steve Waugh Foundation. A recent ‘Day at the Racetrack with Mark Webber’ event raised an incredible amount of money, such is his popularity.

I’m sure there are many more chapters yet to be told in the racing career of Mark Webber, but some key constants remain. He is still the same guy who treats everyone with respect and courtesy, but underneath this disarming veil lies a passion and desire to be the best that he can be.

W
HEN THE TELEPHONE CALL CAME, MY FIRST REACTION WAS
one of surprise.

‘Wow,’ I thought, ‘that’s a pretty big statement with 12 laps to go, given we’re running this way round!’

‘Telephone call’ is the expression we use to describe radio communication from the pit wall to the cockpit. The statement being made over the radio was ‘Multi 21’. Even in a sport where mixed messages are the order of the day, ‘Multi 21’ was the clearest order we could have been given. Both Sebastian Vettel and I, in Red Bull Renaults #1 and #2 respectively, knew exactly what it meant: that our cars should finish the Malaysian Grand Prix, second round of the 2013 Formula One World Championship, in that order, #2 followed by #1, with me first and Sebastian second. That’s how we were running at the time, with me leading my teammate late in the race and no threat from anyone else.

Why was I surprised? Rarely had the call come when it was in my favour, that’s why. But this time the circumstances were very much in my favour: I had timed my crossover – the moment at which to make the mandatory tyre change from one Pirelli compound to the other – perfectly. Seb had got tangled up with the pursuing Mercedes and I found myself in clear air, so I was out in front.

I was a lot less surprised by Sebastian’s reaction to the ‘Multi 21’ message.

After the final stops, when he was cruising up behind me, I could see the ‘letter-box’ opening on the rear wing of his car: he was using its Drag Reduction System (DRS) to increase his top speed. Straightaway I knew he was going against what the team had asked us to do. He was going to make it hard for me.

Not for the first time another thought followed: ‘How the f#*k are we, as a team, in this situation?’

In hindsight I should have turned my engine back up and got into the fight, but there was so much going on in my head that it never occurred to me to do so. We came home first and second, but instead of finishing with the cars in #2 and #1 order, Vettel took the victory.

The incident was the final nail in the coffin of my relationship with Red Bull Racing at management level. ‘Multi 21’ was just one flashpoint in a sequence that began as far back as Istanbul in 2010. It was an important stage on my journey, but it’s not the whole story.

This book is.

I
T
’
S A CLOSED WORLD
.

All your senses are either severely limited or under unremitting assault. The space you occupy is small and bloody hot.

The helmet is tight-fitting. Your view is confined to what you can see through the ‘mailbox’ opening in your helmet and in two postage-stamp-sized rear mirrors.

And you are in this minor hell, all going well, for two hours. You’re in isolation, but it’s far from splendid.

The cockpit gradually becomes a lonely place as the clock ticks down to race start. In many ways it’s similar to sitting in any racing car – except it’s a lot more claustrophobic.

A Grand Prix car is built for speed, not comfort. The driver doesn’t get into his car, he inserts himself into the cockpit as a living component of the machine. The cockpit is a compact place, especially for a driver of my dimensions. At around 184 centimetres and a fighting weight of 75 kilos
I was never the ideal size or weight for a Grand Prix driver. There have been tall F1 drivers – men like Dan Gurney in the old days, Gerhard Berger more recently, Jenson Button today – but they are the exceptions who prove the rule. Better to be a jockey than a Michael Jordan.

The space is really tight around your knees – it’s like sitting in an old-fashioned bathtub with your feet higher than your backside. The pedals are actually moulded around your racing boot, both for comfort and to counter excessive vibration: the last thing you want is for your foot to slip off the pedal at high speed in the middle of a race. The boots are thin-soled so you can feel everything and they are the one item I’m very fussy about – once I break a pair in nicely they generally last me for a season.

Helmets are different: I go through between four and seven. The exterior takes a bit of a hammering, especially if you are coming through from the back of the grid as the ‘marbles’ (small pieces of rubber coming off other cars’ tyres) come pinging at you on the way through. I used to push my head back into the headrest a lot because that way I could move my head around in the helmet a bit. The interior is customised for each driver, although not the straps, and I found they used to sit a little too far rearwards for me. At fast tracks like Monza, Red Bull Chief Technical Officer Adrian Newey used to hate running any little windscreens in front of the cockpit because of the aerodynamic effect, and I had to open my mouth to counteract the helmet lift from the onrushing air. I would end up with two bruises under my neck.

I had only one superstition: I always got into my car from the left, a hangover from my karting days – if you got in on
the right side of one of those you ended up with burns on your arm from the engine!

But I did have a race-day routine. It began with a last visit to the treatment couch to have my hips and pelvis loosened up a little and my shoulders and neck rubbed.

In F1 the pit lane opens to let the cars out on track for their final warm-up procedures half an hour before race start. At that stage I was always happy to talk to my partner, Ann, or Dad but people I didn’t know were kept well away.

Then it was time to hop in. Or, more accurately, step, slither and bump into your seat, which has been almost literally tailor-made to your unique dimensions. The driver is the biggest component in that cockpit: they make the seat up around him, starting from behind. It couldn’t fit more snugly if it came from Savile Row.

The seatbelts intensify that feeling. They come together in a six-pointed star at your centre: two of them come up through the groin area on either side of your manhood; and there are two lap straps and two shoulder straps, all designed to the nearest millimetre around your size. What most people don’t realise is that if you’re not careful the edges of the belts can fold or ‘pinch’ and when they do those edges can be quite sharp, especially around the more sensitive areas of a bloke’s anatomy.