VLADIMIR RYS \ BONGARTS \ GETTY IMAGES \ COURTESY OF RED BULL RACING
So, when did international sports superstars get so charming? Aren’t formula one drivers, with all that money and attention, meant to be self-absorbed? I’m in the local library with my daughter when the phone rings. It’s an unscheduled call from Mark Webber. He apologises for hassles that scrambled our plans to meet up in person. “When does it suit you to chat tonight?” he asks. “You tell me a good time.” I tell him a good time. “Great, I’ll call you then.”
Webber lives in a world of private planes, pampering, adulation and massive wealth, but none of these seem to have compromised his down-to-earth character.
On the dot comes the call and, relaxed and candid, he sounds prepared to discuss any aspect of Team Webber – that is the man from Queanbeyan, New South Wales, himself, his manager and partner Ann Neal and his family and friends.
Let’s talk about season 2011. While he hasn’t had a win yet, Webber consistently finished in the points every race so far, and completed every race except at Monza in Italy.
“A few positives,” Webber says of the year. “It’s been very consistent. You have to always measure yourself against what opposition you have at the time. I’ve had some very strong performances … but they haven’t been anywhere near enough. It’s been a bit of a bizarre season in many ways where one guy’s run away with it and the rest of us have had to grab what we can.
“I had a very strong year last year and you want to improve from that and that hasn’t happened this year. You need to keep working hard. It’s as simple as that.
“I’ve had quite a few second places, so I’ll try and get some wins.”
Is it hard to keep pressure up on himself year after year?
“I’ve had a pretty long career now and you learn what is important to make you still compete at the highest level week in, week out,” he says. “It comes down to keeping things as simple as you can, taking care of the processes and working on weaknesses, keeping your strengths and just improving, because the minute you’re not improving obviously you’re going backwards, particularly at this level.”
Webber’s relationship with teammate Sebastian Vettel has at times been strained. At the Turkish Grand Prix in June 2010, a collision with Vettel cost Webber the lead, allowing McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button to move into first and second places.
Webber dropped to third and Vettel dropped out of the race. At the time Webber said “I wasn’t totally happy with the situation” and the pair would disagree “until we go to our graves” over who was at fault.
Now he describes their relationship as a healthy rivalry.
“Last year was much more strained than this year,” Webber says. “It was very, very tense. We had a very strong battle throughout the year. Obviously there was contact on the track. There were some tensions within the team … I admit it was difficult. This year’s been a little bit more straightforward in terms of our relationship. When we’re fighting as we were last year, every weekend, that white-line fever is more intense. But we’ve spent a bit less time together this year; it’s not as tense.”
It’s been a remarkable career for Webber since leaving Australia for the UK in 1995 to pursue his racing dreams. He debuted in formula one in 2002, and it has meant fame and fortune. Last year he was Australia’s highest-earning sportsman, according to BRW magazine’s rankings, earning $13.4 million, $4.4 million up on the previous year,
He was happy to re-sign last year with the Red Bull team.
“The team’s on a phenomenal run right now. Obviously I’ve been there a long time and we’ve done a lot together. Sebastian’s had a great season this year. I’ve done my apprenticeship with smaller teams and I’ve now got myself into a position where I’m with a team that is quite sensational – continuity, everyone is aiming for us, everyone is aiming for our performance, aiming for our level. Having come through the smaller and middle teams, you don’t want to go back there in a hurry.”
Webber’s life and career have been enriched by the inspiring presence of Ann Neal, whom he met in 1995 at the former Amaroo Park raceway in Sydney’s western suburbs. Neal, an English woman 13 years his senior, helps with Webber’s management and career strategy.
“She’s been a rock,” he says. “I had a lot of drive, but she had plenty of drive as well … together we work very hard.
“It’s a very small team – my dad and mum and family on my side – and Annie’s side as well. We took it head-on. For sure we had some rough roads. Never a straight road to get to where we got to. But that’s what you’ve got to learn from. That’s where she’s great. What makes you stronger is dealing with the adversities along the way.
“She has been unbelievably loyal. She is biased but she can still give me a spray, don’t worry about that, about doing better. It’s been a good partnership and I will be forever thankful for the professional role she played while privately we’re obviously very close.”
Webber copes all right with the fame and the attention and the strange life of an F1 star.
“It’s certainly changed in the last few years.
“If I walk into hotels or if I’m on a private plane, or if I do things which are not normal, they are still not normal for me; I still don’t take that stuff for granted. It is a function of my work. But if I want to go camping and have a log fire, those things, they still mean a huge amount to me.”
Mark Webber
COURTESY OF RED BULL RACING
He acknowledges the interest from women for race-car drivers. “A lot of people love the sport. It’s not that they might like you or your work, they love the sport, and particularly females.”
In 2003 Webber organised and competed in a 10-day trek across Tasmania to raise money for children’s cancer research charities. After a three-year break, he is hosting the event again this year, now called the Swisse Mark Webber Tasmania Challenge.
Webber was inspired to launch the challenge after the death from cancer of his grandfather and his contact with friends with children touched by?cancer.
“I was pretty young when I saw my granddad die,” he says. “I was old enough to remember, and it really, really upset me. It’s even worse now to look back on how it affected him in the last years of his life. Such a great man. To have a finish like that was heartbreaking. So when I started having a profile, I thought I could make a difference. I went to a lot of hospitals in Australia and in the UK. That hits you straight between the eyes to see the parents there and these cracking young kids that been dealt a brutal hurdle.”
For a fitness and outdoor activity fanatic with a desire to help, the challenge suited Webber well.
“To have people be challenged, test themselves, they’re not quite sure if they are going to get through this type of challenge. But knowing there are other people that are having a completely different fight that could well not have the right finish for them … it rocks the family.”
The response to Webber’s work in this area has been moving: “The letters I’ve received from people who’ve stayed in the units (we’ve helped fund) have meant a lot to me.
“It’s very rewarding to be able to do that. At the end of the day I do a different job. I’ve driven racing cars for a long time and it’s given me a lifestyle that I would never, ever have dreamt of having. We’re all normal people, just trying to help out, to give someone a bit of relief, a bit of a leg up.
“And the wisdom in people you come across – you learn how really, really good people do really, really good things.”
His home with Neal is in Buckinghamshire, England.
“I like to have it pretty similar to how I grew up in Queanbeyan, which was a great place to grow up. I have a good circle of friends, I’ve got a couple of dogs. I enjoy being there. I don’t like to talk a huge amount about what’s going on in my life when I get back there, and my friends understand that. They’re not all interested in racing.”
At 35, Webber is a formula-one veteran. For how long does he see himself competing at this level?
“You’re only as good as your last race, as they keep saying,” he says, adding that at the Japan Grand Prix he was on pace with Jenson Button, Seb Vettel and Fernando Alonso. “I’ve got a lot to offer still. I’m driving well. Not well enough yet, obviously, to put the amount of pressure that I would like to have done on (teammate) Sebastian (Vettel) this year. It’s something I need to tackle next year.
“When I’m getting this type of enjoyment out of putting the car to the limit, working hard with the guys, and as long as I’ve got the drive and motivation and desire to challenge for some top results, then I will continue.
“There’s been a lot of guys do very, very well in their late 30s. Mansell won his championship (then). There is a crossover, for sure. By that I mean wisdom starts to play a very important role over bravado and speed.”
A few days later I caught up with Webber in Sydney, just off a plane from Korea. I found him with mixed emotions, happy for Red Bull’s success in the Korean GP but saddened by the death the day before of his friend Dan Wheldon in an IndyCar pile-up in Las Vegas.
“I’ve lost a few mates in racing,” he says. “It’s a club, really. We know what happens in the cockpit … the margins are very fine and sometimes it doesn’t go your way.
“I’m not massively religious but for whatever reason the bloke upstairs decides that’s what it’s going to be that day.”
Racing hard, if not fast
Mark Webber has launched a new Adventure Run, giving people the chance to compete with him over a 6.5km course through Hobart on Sunday, December 4.
The run precedes the five-day Swisse Mark Webber Tasmania Challenge, a multisport adventure across the state, starting at the Freycinet Peninsula on December 7 and finishing in the state’s capital on December 11.
» Contact 6221 8811
» www.markwebbertasmaniachallenge.com