Aussie Grit Read online

  Part of my perceived problem with race starts in the later stages of my F1 career was not, as a lot of people probably thought, down to age, but my sensitivity to rubber! At any race start the driver wants to be as sensitive as he can to what happens when he drops the clutch and begins to feel the wheels move under him. It’s essential to eliminate or at least minimise wheel-spin – and after the change of rules on F1 tyre supply I just couldn’t ‘feel’ the Pirellis to the degree I should have done.

  So much information to process as the crucial moment approaches. Do we know the tyre temperatures? What’s the grip level from the track like? It can vary dramatically depending on whether a driver’s starting position is on the left or right side of the track. One will have had more rubber laid down on it during race weekend than the other as the cars follow the correct line, and that rubber will interact with your tyres to help ‘launch’ the car into motion.

  What’s the clutch’s ‘bite’ point, the moment at which the car comes alive? Back in my Formula Ford days it was pretty straightforward: 8000 revs, dump the clutch, bang, go! The technical sophistication of a Grand Prix car is light years away from that, but the reactions from the components governed by technology were never entirely predictable – a bit like the driver’s!

  And what about the track itself? They can be worlds apart: at Interlagos in Brazil, the start is uphill so the driver has to keep his foot on the brakes to stop rolling backwards; at Suzuka in Japan it’s the exact opposite as the circuit plunges immediately downhill to that thrilling first corner and the car wants to start rolling forward.

  Then all hell is let loose on your eardrums, first by the sound of your engine screaming into racing mode. The first few seconds of a race – often so crucial to what happens at the other end – also depend on the track. Take Monaco: the run to the first corner, Ste Dévote, is short, tense and incredibly tight; Monza is the opposite, with that long, long run down to the right–left chicane at the end of the straight. Getting the gear-shift points is vital: lights on the wheel and, if you have asked for it, a ‘beep’ will remind you to shift.

  A driver goes through so many emotions during the course of a race – all your sensations are heightened – so if someone goes off the track you can actually smell the cut grass before you go past the scene. It’s just as well, really: your eyes are not telling you all that much. The driver’s eye-line is at knee level so the sensation of speed is greatly increased from where he is sitting, and the trajectory can be a little hard to pick out.

  Our vision – already fairly tightly defined by our helmets – is further reduced by the high sides of the cockpit with the padded insert to protect the driver’s head in case of impact. Believe it or not, but when I’m in the cockpit I can’t see my own front wing. And it only gets worse when it rains.

  Your visibility then is virtually nil, so you are making micro-decisions the whole time. I can’t think of any sport, motorcycle racing excepted, where such focus is required, where your visibility is so severely tested at such speed. Every now and again you get a break in the level of spray, you catch a glimpse of a braking board or something else that will give you a context.

  You’re looking for hoardings or signs as markers to where exactly you might be on a 5-kilometre circuit. Your default vision has been pulled back so much closer to where you are sitting and believe me, pulling information from the side of the car rather than the front, working out to within 20 metres where you actually are, is mentally very draining. The racing lines change in the wet, too. More than ever, in these conditions, composure is what’s called for.

  Mental strength is certainly what you need when it comes to racing at a place like Monaco. But then there is no place remotely like Monaco. When I was leading there it was constant resetting, lap by lap: copy and paste what you did last time round, nudge your confidence level up over a two-to-three lap stretch; don’t try to grab too much round there. At Mirabeau, for example, the downhill run followed by the right-hander that takes you towards the hairpin, you have to fight against the feeling that you’re on the brakes too early. Jenson Button once asked me if I felt, as he said he did, that as the race went on the Monaco barriers actually closed in on you even more. My answer was a firm ‘No’: those barriers don’t move; it’s always about you, your car and the track you are on.

  Our job is to keep the car on the absolute limit and get it through the corners as quickly as possible. Every F1 corner is a tightrope, with the driver working as hard as he can to balance the car and get a bit more out of it – yet this animal underneath us is trying to pull our arms out of our sockets and our head off our shoulders.

  Corner entry is the crucial thing: hit the brakes at the right moment, hit them hard and ignore the deceleration forces – up to five times your own body weight – going through you.

  Next: turn into the corner itself. Some turn in early, others ‘go deeper’, then turn in later and more violently. Keep the car in line: don’t put too much lock on, don’t slide – stay on that tightrope. Get to the apex, the real change of direction, and start thinking about getting out of the corner. Keep the beast in line before you release it … use all of the road and then some on exit … then get on the throttle. Focus, feeling and concentration, corner after corner, lap after lap.

  In fact you can get into that trance-like state that sporting people call ‘the zone’. For a racing driver it’s about flow and rhythm, your inputs allowing the car to weave its way around a circuit smoothly and consistently – something you can gauge by your lap times. When I was ‘in the zone’ I found myself thinking like a chess-player, several moves ahead; when the car was going through Casino Square I was already mentally at Mirabeau. There was that feeling of easy repeatability: every lap would be timed to within a tenth of a second of the one before or after. Rhythm … repetition.

  It’s so hard to shut down after a Grand Prix. Your ears feel as if you’ve just got out of an aeroplane but then these things are fighter jets that stay on the ground, so in a sense you have. You’ve been fixed for so long at the centre of a storm of sound and vibration, your concentration levels have been phenomenally high as you process information coming at you and changing virtually with every metre of ground you have been covering. All you want to do is get out of there.

  What’s it like to be in the cockpit of an F1 car?

  It’s like running a marathon in shoes two sizes too small.

  1

  No Wings, Learning to Fly: 1976–94

  I WAS AN ADDICT BEFORE I WAS 10.

  I simply couldn’t get enough: I’d have my fix on a Sunday night, or Monday morning, and I’d keep coming back for another hit, and another one after that. It started in 1984, when I was just seven years old. That was the year Nigel Mansell should have won the Monaco Grand Prix for Lotus but crashed in the wet on the hill going up towards Casino Square. His accident left a young bloke called Ayrton Senna in with a great shout of winning his first Grand Prix in a Toleman Hart, of all things, but the race was stopped because of the rain and Alain Prost was declared the winner for McLaren on count-back instead. I remember it like yesterday. My drug, of course, was Formula 1.

  I was born on 27 August, 1976, midway through the memorable year when Britain’s James Hunt and Austrian Niki Lauda went head-to-head for the world title. Their season-long duel, including Lauda’s near-fatal crash in Germany, was the subject of the highly successful 2013 movie Rush. When I came on the scene the Webber clan was living in Queanbeyan (from the Aboriginal ‘Quinbean’, meaning ‘clear waters’) in the Southern Tablelands of New South Wales, hard up against the border with the Australian Capital Territory. It’s best known for producing people who excelled in sport, like cricketer Brad Haddin, squash star Heather McKay and Rugby Union great David Campese.

  Queanbeyan had been the stamping ground for the Webber family for a couple of generations by the time I arrived. My paternal grandfather, Clive, was born in Balmain in Sydney and my grandmother on that side, Tryphosa �
�� Dad tells me it’s a Biblical name but he’s never come across it in his reading – was from Cessnock in the Hunter region of New South Wales. Both of them moved to the Queanbeyan area early in life, before they knew each other. They married in Queanbeyan in 1941. My dad, Alan, came along in 1947 and he has one sister, Gwen.

  Clive was originally a wood merchant, back in the days when there was good business to be done delivering firewood. He delivered wood to Hotel Currajong, where then Prime Minister Ben Chifley spent a lot of time, and also supplied wood to Parliament House. When war broke out Clive went down to Sydney to enlist but was sent home when they realised they needed to hang on to the bloke who delivered wood to such important addresses. He continued as a wood carter until 1955, when he bought what became the family business, Bridge Motors, a Leyland dealership with two petrol bowsers on the footpath on the main street of Queanbeyan.

  My dad and mum met in the early sixties. My mum, Diane, was from a well-known local family, the Blewitts. Her dad, David George Blewitt – ‘DG’ for short – and her mum, Marie, were married in 1947, but Marie died of cancer at the age of 48 so my sister Leanne and I never knew her. Dad tells me Marie was a wonderful lady: they got along famously and she worked for him at one stage. DG had 2000 acres which my mother’s sister Pam still owns and runs. Mum was at school with Dad’s sister and often used to spend time at their home. Mum likes to say she couldn’t stand Dad at first, but he insists that was only because he used to like watching the ABC, all the old English comedy shows he still enjoys, and she thought he was being a bit of a smartie-bum, as he puts it. She must have got over that because they started going out in 1968 and were married in 1971, on Dad’s 24th birthday. As he likes to say, he ‘Blewitt’ when he married her! My sister, Leanne, came along in 1974 and in 1976 I followed. I share the same birthday with cricketer Sir Donald Bradman and, coincidentally, with two Grand Prix drivers from the not-so-distant past, Derek Warwick and Gerhard Berger.

  Dad built our family home in Irene Avenue, an awesome place that for me was filled with good memories. I went to Isabella Street Primary and then Karabar High, both close to home. I represented the school in athletics and Rugby League, I played Aussie Rules and I was quite keen on cricket and swimming. I was a jack of all trades and legend of none! Perhaps surprisingly it was my mum who encouraged me to get involved in as many different sports as I could. ‘Having a go’ was how she put it, and I was only too happy to take her advice.

  Beyond the normal schoolboy activities, Dad was all over motor sport. As a youngster he used to hitchhike to Warwick Farm, which was then a popular Sydney motor-racing venue. Naturally, with Clive running a mechanical repairs business, there were always motorbikes around so it’s no surprise that I grew up with an interest in motor sport myself.

  I often think of my grandfather Clive. He was a really special person – incredibly popular, always had a smile on his face, a hell of a man for a practical joke. He was unique and definitely important to what I’ve stood for, the legacy left to his own son and to me. Dad’s pretty similar. He likes to say every day is a birthday for him, he doesn’t want to have any enemies, just wants to have a good time. Clivey was a legend and many of Dad’s traits – and some of mine as well – have come from him.

  Mum’s dad, DG, loved us to bits, but he was a farmer and always busy. I remember him worrying incessantly about me either injuring myself on the motorbike at the farm or starting bushfires. Over the years I did both, so perhaps he had every reason to be worried! It’s fair to say, too, that I was never going to be a farmer. I was always at the workshop tinkering away with Clive. The business grew, so they moved it out of town, and Dad took it on from there.

  It wasn’t the showiest joint around but it was always a popular spot – the same guys were always around the place. Opposite our house in Irene Avenue in Mark Place lived a family called the Zardos. Both their lads used to work at Dad’s petrol station and Gino Zardo went on to become one of the best photographers in New York. He calls me ‘Sparky’ whenever I see him, and that’s all down to Clive. When I was born Clive said, ‘He’s a little Champion spark plug!’ and the name just stuck.

  Clive died of cancer at 78 when I was 15. The day he died, I was staying with one of my best mates, Peter Woods, and his mum came down and said, ‘Your granddad passed away.’ I was a mess. Seeing what he’d had to go through for the past three years of his illness had been extremely painful for our family. Clive hadn’t even seen me go-karting, which I started when I was 13. I would love for all my grandparents to have seen what I’ve achieved, for Mum and Dad’s sake. You always want those sorts of relationships to go on forever, but of course they can’t. Dad’s a big, solid man, as you would expect an ex-Rugby player to be, whereas Clive was like me, lean and tall. Mum often says in some of the photos when he was young he’s just a dead ringer for me when I was that age. Tryphosa died around the time of the first Melbourne Grand Prix in 1996. I remember Dad getting the phone call just as we were leaving the hotel and being totally blown away by how strong he was. I think of them often and when I’ve raced, although they never saw me turn a wheel, they’ve always been with me. Cancer and its impact on so many lives means something specific and very painful to me.

  Queanbeyan wasn’t a big town by any stretch of the imagination, but Leanne and I quickly built our own separate group of friends as we were growing up. My earliest memories of Leanne are of being on the farm on our motorbikes and tailing lambs. She was always into animals and had a far more natural instinct for the farm than I ever did. We had massive family times together on the farm in the evenings, my grandfather DG, Aunty Pam, Uncle Nigel and their two boys, Adam and Johnny, Mum, Dad, Leanne and me. There were lots of summer holidays to Mollymook on the New South Wales south coast where Dad’s sister Gwen had a holiday home. Leanne and I would both take a couple of friends so there were always lots of kids running amok or hitting the surf.

  In school term Leanne and I were always on a different program. I was always late to bed and late to school, she was the complete opposite. Mum used to take us both to the Queanbeyan swimming club on Wednesday nights and I remember how freezing cold it was. Leanne and I did a bit of recreational stuff together but that stopped when racing took over.

  Dad had played Rugby Union through school and on weekends until he was in his thirties. He was pretty good, too: he represented New South Wales as a junior, played first grade in the local competition and he likes to boast that he played for Queanbeyan alongside Australian great David Campese in 1981.

  Thanks to Mum and Dad, sport certainly played a large part in my own upbringing. Dad still remembers very fondly the day I was picked above my age group for a Rugby League final: I scored two intercepted tries and helped us win the local shield. I played full-forward in Aussie Rules and kicked quite a few goals, and I had a crack at tennis as well. I wasn’t a gun at any of it, but the mentality in the Webber household was to have a crack.

  Queanbeyan was a small enough town with plenty of competitive families of people who loved sport. There was always that natural sort of comparison going on. ‘Were you in the newspaper?’ was a frequent question among the people I grew up with. But it was always very friendly: it wasn’t a contest between parents as to whose son had done what, it was always just a question of wanting to do well, because that’s what we were encouraged to do.

  I did enjoy sport, and I’m pretty sure that’s where my competitive nature grew. Whether it was a football match or a computer game, I always liked to win. My only problem was that I wouldn’t put in the practice and the discipline to improve. It wasn’t till I was much older that my focus sharpened and I could see the benefits of applying myself.

  I got a privileged insight into the need for discipline and dedication in sport at a pretty early age. When I was 13 I ‘worked’ for a year as a ball-boy for the Canberra Raiders, a little job that came about because Dad knew the Raiders’ Under-21 coach, Mick Doyle. Ball-boy for Mal Meninga and those blokes for
a year – what an opportunity! Ten dollars a game was big bucks in those days, and I even travelled to all the away games, which meant hotel rooms in places as far afield as Brisbane. Phenomenal experience for a kid in his early teens!

  To see those guys play, to hear the legendary coach Tim Sheens firing them up – I didn’t fully realise how lucky I was to have that experience. At that stage I simply didn’t understand how important motivation was. Those players did whatever it took to get them out on the paddock week in, week out, because that’s what competing and winning is all about: turning up and having a real go.

  Sport apart, school and I didn’t really connect. Depending on which of my teachers you asked, they would tell you: ‘Mark Webber? He was loud … he was popular … he was articulate … he was a bit arrogant … he was lazy and unmotivated … he drove his car like a maniac!’

  Most of those descriptions were true, I suppose, but the negative stuff didn’t come about because I didn’t like being at school in the first place. Far from it: I loved school, I rarely missed a day. But I was mischievous and disruptive in the classroom, no question about it. It used to frustrate Mum quite a lot and she threatened me with boarding school on a number of occasions. Dad didn’t help matters because if the school hauled him and Mum in when I was in trouble he’d laugh when he heard what I’d been getting up to. He even went so far as to tell them that he wished he had thought up some of my pranks when he was at school. Actually he had: one of them was stuffing potatoes up the exhaust pipes of the teachers’ cars and he confessed he had done that in his own youth. On another memorable occasion I was in an agriculture class and I buried all the shovels. Next day the teacher couldn’t find them; I got a telephone call and told them they were right there beneath their feet!

  My last year at school was when I had the biggest fun I’ve had in my life, because I got my driving licence. I was never one for studying but when there was something I was interested in, like getting my licence, it seemed to come more easily. I got the book you needed to study to go for your licence one day and passed it the next! I had just one lesson from a friend of Dad’s who ran a driving school, but Dad had let me sit on his lap when I was eight or so on the way out to the farm, and I’d had plenty of chances to drive tractors and other farm vehicles before I was 10, so the licence was never a problem. My first car was a 1969 Toyota Corona, two on the tree, $500, and you can imagine the stuff we got up to.