Aussie Grit (40 page)

It took me back to a racetrack I love, Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium, on 3 May. Our sister car, #14, claimed Porsche’s first pole position of their new era in sports-car racing while our #20 started fifth on the grid. Another landmark: despite some technical issues both cars made it to the race finish, one of the key early objectives for Porsche in this first season back. And so to Le Mans.

Going back to La Sarthe was a powerfully emotional experience. The last time I was there, I felt I could have died. Many people, in the media especially, were wondering how I would feel when I first took the 919 out onto the famous circuit. So was I. But as soon as I was on track the 1999 experiences felt as if they belonged to another lifetime.
Almost at once I realised I was really going to enjoy the challenge, especially as the 2014 event would give me the chance to complete my first racing laps of the 13.6-kilometre circuit.

Winning the 24 Hours was not uppermost in our minds at the Porsche team. Our professed aim was to get one of the 919s to the finish. We had done that at Silverstone, but after just a quarter of the Le Mans race time. We had proved our sheer speed with pole position in Belgium. Could we combine speed and durability for a 24-hour marathon? As for me, I simply wanted to leave La Sarthe with happier memories than I took away 15 years before.

At first it didn’t look as if I would. Wednesday brought an early reminder of how badly Le Mans can bite you when free practice was red-flagged following a massive accident to Audi driver Loïc Duval. Happily he came out of it all right, though the medical people forbade him to take part in the race. It was a pleasant surprise when we ran in the top two positions on Wednesday, with the #20 leading the way, but once the Thursday evening session was finished we were second (#14) and fourth. One car on the front row, one on the second row: we had every reason to be pleased. I had only fired in two timed laps in the #20 but I was a lot more comfortable than I had felt at the pre-race test. I felt absolutely ready to race at Le Mans.

On Porsche’s return to La Sarthe, Timo, Brendon and I led the race at the 22-hour mark but ultimately fell short when I had to retire the car with a powertrain problem. Nevertheless, it was a phenomenal effort by everyone involved. The team spirit was unbelievable all weekend – and not just in our camp. After the race Timo and I went to congratulate the winning Audi team and
we
received a standing
ovation from
them
, team and drivers alike. That camaraderie was something I had never experienced in my racing life. I had genuinely good times at RBR and got on well with the majority of the people there, so this is no reflection on them. But in WEC racing there was an openness, a one-for-all approach that I found very refreshing. After Le Mans, my passion for endurance racing was fully reignited. It’s the toughest race in the endurance racing world; it’s dangerous because after all, you are racing at 350 kilometres an hour in the night and the traffic. But the feeling you get when it’s all going well is irresistible. I would love to achieve an outright win at Le Mans.

*

The WEC calendar is very different from the hectic F1 calendar. The races are a lot longer, but there are far fewer of them. It wasn’t until September that we went racing again. There were five rounds remaining in the 2014 WEC season, the first of them at the spectacular Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas, always a favourite staging-post for Ann and me. It was a dramatic weekend for weather, with massive thunderstorms and the race red-flagged because of heavy rain for 45 minutes. After qualifying second and third the two 919s came home fourth and fifth.

At Fuji in Japan we qualified second and third, but this time the #20 car secured another podium with third place ahead of the #14 in fourth. Shanghai on the first weekend in November saw the #14 claim another pole position while we were just 24 thousandths of a second slower in third place. Tyre damage saw us drop to sixth by the end but the other three boys took our second successive podium and
our third for the season. Things were picking up nicely, and Bahrain, another track familiar to me from F1 days, brought another memorable moment for us: the two Porsches were on the podium together in second and third positions.

If Le Mans was the highlight for me in my first year back in the sports-car world, the lowest point was the crash that finished my race in the final WEC round in Brazil. It was the biggest crash of my entire career; I was incredibly lucky to come away relatively unscathed. Like a number of other big LMP1 accidents in recent years, mine involved one of the Ferrari GT cars. I wish there was more footage of it because to this day I don’t fully understand how it happened. Judging by the point of impact with the wall, it would appear that I passed Matteo Cressoni on the inside of the last corner and he then made contact with the right rear of my car. The closing speeds of the prototypes and GT cars are astronomically different, so it’s sometimes hard for those guys to judge how fast we are coming.

I don’t remember anything of the accident itself. In fact I’ve lost 30 minutes from my memory. But instinct kicked in and I spoke to the guys on the radio, unplugged it and shut down the systems on my car. I asked the medics at the scene if I could get back in and finish the race! It was only once I had been transferred to the medivac helicopter that I came round. I recall Timo coming to see me and asking, ‘What happened?’ Funnily enough I asked him the same question! I may not remember that moment, but Annie certainly does. This is how she saw it.

‘One of the reasons I remember it so well is that the day it happened, Sunday 30 November, was Luke’s 23rd birthday. It was a rare weekend at home for Luke and me after I had
decided to skip the final round of the WEC so I could spend time with him while he was home from university. Earlier in the day we had enjoyed a birthday breakfast at our local coffee shop with Mitch Evans, the young New Zealand driver we took under our wings when he came to the UK several years earlier and who lives close by.

‘Meanwhile, almost 6000 miles away in São Paulo, Brazil, Mark was preparing for the six-hour WEC race. Later that afternoon Mitch, Luke and I settled down to watch it on a typically grey and dismal English winter’s day. It was a highly entertaining race with plenty of battles throughout the order and it had started particularly well for Timo, Brendan and Mark in the #20 919. From pole position, Timo led and when he handed over to Mark for his first stint, they were leading by more than 20 seconds. However, it wasn’t long after Mark handed over the driving duties to Brendon that he rang the house to say the car had lost power and the engineers were trying to recover the situation. As they dropped down the order, and knowing that they were fighting a losing battle with an underpowered car, we started to take our eye off the TV screen – Mitch left to meet a mate for dinner, Luke buried himself in his reference books and I was by myself, keeping one eye on what was happening on TV while reviewing sections of this very book’s manuscript with the other.

‘Somewhere, lurking in the back of my mind but never allowing it to intrude too much further, I had always wondered what it would be like not to be trackside in the event of Mark’s having a bad crash. I was to find the answer that afternoon.

‘Mark’s had some big crashes over the years but Brazil 2014 was by far the worst he’s ever suffered. I had been alerted to the fact there had been a nasty crash by the tone of the commentators, who had spotted the red flags. It got my attention and the cameras then picked up the mangled wreckage of a car in the middle of the track. It’s bizarre the tricks your mind and eyes can play on you at moments like this: I thought I was seeing the obliterated remains of a single-seater car, not a sports car. There was nothing left of the car and there were flames licking around the area where a driver would or should be sitting in a single-seater. I’ve seen some terrible accidents and felt that whoever was in that one couldn’t have survived.

‘The TV identified it as a Porsche, then one of the LMP1 Porsches, which could only mean one of two cars – the #20 or the #14. Seconds later, they confirmed it was the #20 car of Mark Webber. I looked again, still seeing a single-seater car, and could see yellow – and the only yellow I could think of was the yellow on the top of Mark’s race helmet. Knowing it was his car and it was him, I thought he had died. I couldn’t watch any longer. I shouted to Luke that something terrible had happened. He said afterwards that he didn’t think I was even watching the race at that stage and his first instinct was that something had happened to one of our dogs. But, when he got to me, he saw what was happening on TV. I sat on the floor in our hallway out of sight and sound of the TV with Luke doing his best to comfort and reassure me. He was terribly upset himself but he said he had to go back and watch what was happening so he would know.

‘At first, the signs weren’t encouraging – I remember him coming back to me saying, “It doesn’t look good” Mum.’
But then a few seconds later I heard him yell that Mark had spoken on the radio and then that he had waved from the stretcher. The sense of relief was immense – we hugged and hugged one another. I returned to watch. The bigger and happily more positive picture began to emerge and when the accident was replayed, the penny dropped that what my mind had been telling me was a completely destroyed single-seater car was, in fact, only the back end of the Porsche 919. Had I stayed to watch the next bit of footage I would have seen the front of the car – the capsule where the drivers are cocooned – had done its job brilliantly as it was virtually intact.

‘Further relief and reassurance was forthcoming within a few minutes when the Porsche team swung its crisis management procedure into action and made contact with me, asked where I was, asked if I had been watching and gave me the latest news which I could then relate to Alan and Di, who had been watching the race back home in Australia. Porsche handled everything supremely well and continued with regular updates over the phone for the next couple of hours until Mark was able to call me himself from hospital.

‘He sounded drowsy and weak but it was a massive relief to hear his voice. He said he was fine but the concussion and losing 30 minutes of Sunday afternoon had shocked him: he said he didn’t know how much more he wanted to keep putting himself through this. I told him that now wasn’t the time to worry about that and we could talk about it later, knowing full well it was a decision that only he could make and one I wasn’t going to influence.

‘I am often asked how I bear watching Mark race and I suppose the simplest answer is that you know it’s something
they enjoy doing; it’s what they get out of bed for every day. And actually it’s not about you; you’re not forced to sign up to be the partner or wife of a racing driver but if you do, you subscribe to living life on the edge. It can bring the highest of highs but it can also come at a price that you have to be prepared to accept.’

After the crash I was airlifted to the nearby Hospital Bandeirantes, where I was kept for further tests and overnight observation. The medical care I received was second to none and I was incredibly touched by the immediate response of the Brazilian motor sport community. People like Rubens Barrichello, Felipe Massa and Emerson Fittipaldi were among the first to get in touch. As word of my accident spread, I was inundated by messages from further afield: Gil de Ferran, Dario Franchitti, Michael Carrick (the Manchester United soccer player who has become a good mate), Pat Rafter, Dougie Lampkin, Jason Crump, Dan MacPherson, Lleyton Hewitt and so many of my current and former colleagues like Tom Kristensen, David Brabham, Fernando, JB, Seb, DC, Daniel Ricciardo, Adrian Newey, Christian Horner and Bernie Ecclestone. At times like these everything that’s gone before is stripped away and becomes irrelevant. The sport becomes a sport again and the better side of human nature comes to the fore.

The crash was obviously a tough way to finish 2014. It was the biggest hit of my career and it took the longest time to recover from: I still wasn’t in great shape six weeks after the accident. I was lucky only to sustain a few fractured ribs, a contusion of the left lung and pretty severe concussion. But I still trust myself, I trust the ultra-professional team I drive for and what happened to me in Brazil did
not outweigh the positives from the rest of the year. At the time of writing I have completely recovered and I am totally committed to getting on with my racing career. Brazil was actually one of our strongest showings. We had qualified the #20 919 on pole and held a 20-second lead in the first part of the race. Three hours into the race we suffered a problem with the turbo and we lost power, but the sister car went on to win the race – and that was exactly what the doctor ordered for Porsche heading into 2015.

I
HAVE ALWAYS BELIEVED
I
HAD A BIT OF THE OLD
A
USSIE
battler in me. When I think of my own Australian sporting heroes, past and present, such as Jack Brabham, Mick Doohan, Steve Waugh and Lleyton Hewitt, as well as talent they all had or have very similar traits: tenacity, the sheer guts and determination to go out there and achieve something that’s pretty difficult to do – like competing at the highest level on the international stage. To me, that’s always been a large part of our make-up in Australia.

Men like them share the same sporting qualities I’m most attracted to: integrity, humility and a sense of fair play. They don’t constantly go on about what they’ve done or belittle their opposition, they show respect. They always bounce back and never give up.

In the world of F1, I’m still not sure to this day whether my Aussie battler mentality was the right one to take into the
fray week in, week out. But I felt I performed better when I had my back to the wall: in a bizarre way I preferred to be chasing rather than leading. As much as I was encouraged by others from time to time to take a different stance, it was how I felt most comfortable in my own skin and that’s all that really matters: being able to look yourself in the mirror.