Authors: Mark Webber
I had already tried one out at Mallala in South Australia, thanks to a generous offer from the man who was largely responsible for the series in its early days, Malcolm Ramsay. Curiously enough, at that Mallala test day north of Adelaide Dad spoke to the great Australian-based New Zealand all-round driver Jim Richards, who confirmed Dad’s suspicion that there was something to build on in my case. But he also told Dad, ‘You’ve got to get him out of here!’ So Annie wasn’t the only one thinking along those lines.
I didn’t have a great start to the Formula Holden support race program in Melbourne that weekend: in the opening race I went straight on at Turn 3, which F1 driver Martin Brundle would make instantly world-famous when his Jordan flew through the air at the same spot, but I won the second six-lapper when Paul Stokell slowed on the opening lap, and I passed him and led all the way home.
Television analyst Geoff Brabham – Sir Jack’s eldest son and a brilliant racer in his own right – said this Mark Webber bloke was very talented and trying very hard to head overseas to further his career. How right he was, on the second count at least!
So at the ripe old age of 19 I was heading back to England. Earlier in the year Ann and I had put together a raffle for places in the Yellow Pages corporate suite at the Australian Grand Prix and raised $3000 in Queanbeyan and Canberra! Annie, my family and friends all pitched in and for a week we hit all the local shops and industrial estates flogging raffle tickets, the proceeds from which went towards helping
me set up home in the UK. Not everyone was happy to see me go: Mum had thought it was bad enough when I left Queanbeyan for Sydney, and in those days the other side of the world still seemed a lot further away than it does now.
When I first left Australia in late 1995, I was desperate to see for myself some of the tracks like Brands Hatch, which I’d only ever seen in photos in
Autosport
. ‘What’s it going to be like?’ I asked myself. ‘How amazing it’s going to be even to see it, and then to do the race and the festival, have that first little bit of exposure to the European scene, knowing that I’m over here racing …’
Now Ann and I were going back, not only for a second crack at the festival but to contest the British Formula Ford Championship that preceded it. Who knew what lay ahead?
R
ACING IN
E
UROPE WAS A REAL EYE-OPENER
. I
N THE FIRST
race over there, the yellow flags were out to warn drivers not to overtake and guys were still trying to punt each other off at the next corner! Talk about uncharted waters – we were pushing off in our little boat out into big seas, and the waves kept getting bigger the further we went!
The good thing about 1996 was that Dad didn’t have to put in much money at all; Annie was working too, and together we just chipped away. Everything had to be done the cheapest and fastest way possible because we didn’t have the luxury of hanging around. I was already nearly 20 and couldn’t worry about winning Australian titles as some people like Peewee wanted me to, or do two years in Formula Ford and then another two years in F3 before I had a crack at F1. Stalling would have cost money we didn’t have – a lot more money. We had some momentum
behind us and just had to take advantage of it while it lasted.
For those first few months in England, we stayed with Ann’s mum at Hainault in Essex, which isn’t exactly the leafiest suburb in England. I was in a box room – a very small box room – which was absolutely freezing and very different to what I had grown up with. The room was so small that when I lay down in bed my head touched the wall at one end, my feet the other. I missed my family and my mates and the comforts of home.
There was a gym nearby so I used to get the tube there, but I had no idea what I was doing, I was just tootling around and believing I was getting fit. At that time Michael Schumacher was starting to win World Championships and everybody was saying what a super-fit guy he was, so off I went to the gym. I’d never been in a gym in my life!
I earned some money by buzzing up and down to work as a driving instructor at the circuits at Brands Hatch, Snetterton and anywhere else that would have me. I had an old B-registration Ford Fiesta (thanks to that raffle money), which I used to drive round the M25, jumping the Dartford Toll to save a couple of quid here and there. I was doing big mileage in my B-reg and I remember only being able to put £10 worth of petrol in at times. My wages were £43 for almost a 12-hour day, but I had a ball. Most of my fellow instructors were aspiring young drivers like me, so we would all go off in our different directions at the weekend to race and then come back on Monday morning with colourful stories of what had happened. We were all trying to forge a career, trying to keep the dream alive. I always had to work and all the guys I was instructing
with at Brands Hatch were in the same boat. It was a struggle for all of us.
In stark contrast to this were the Brazilians, most of whom would rock in with a full racing budget and turn up at race meetings driving flash BMWs or Mercedes. They were semi-professional drivers, even at Formula Ford level. I never let it get to me, in fact I turned it into a positive and used it as motivation. I was turning up in my B-reg on a wing and a prayer, hoping it wouldn’t fail me.
One of my fellow instructors was Dan Wheldon, the talented British driver who would be tragically killed in the States in 2011. The other instructors were a bit older than us; they’d tried to make a go of their careers too but had either run out of money or simply hadn’t made it, though they were still good enough to teach other people how to drive around a racetrack.
Ann and I rented a partly furnished house in Attleborough. We were stretched financially on a personal level but Ann was freelancing in PR and earning enough money so we could pay our way, and I was contributing where I could. A lot of our money would go on rent – not just the house we were living in but a TV and video player as well! It didn’t come with either but we couldn’t afford to buy luxuries like that. The house was a few miles south-west of the cathedral city of Norwich, so I could be close to the Van Diemen factory. Any racing driver will tell you how valuable it is to forge close links with the team you are racing for, getting to know the people, being a part of the team as fully as you can.
Because many of the junior racing teams were based there, Norfolk was a hub for young racers from all over the
world. I remember coming home after being at the pub with the Van Diemen mechanics and excitedly telling Ann that Jan Magnussen had been there too. He had just graduated to F1 at that stage and had popped in to catch up with his old mates. I couldn’t believe that I was actually moving in the same circles.
I spent a lot of time at the Van Diemen factory. I have vivid memories of Ralph Firman himself, a chain-smoker, always with a cigarette in his mouth, even when he stuck his head into the cockpit to ask for some driver feedback, so the ash fell off around your feet … Ralph single-handedly bringing a testing session at the Snetterton circuit to a stop when his old Merc clipped the bridge over the track and knocked an advertising hoarding into our path … Me in my B-reg Ford waiting to cross a junction near the factory and Ralph in his old tank of a Merc sneaking up behind me, sitting there behind the wheel in his trademark Coke-bottle glasses and deliberately pushing me out across the very busy A11 … Me picking up the odd extra £90 to drop his mum off at Gatwick Airport in that same battered old Merc of his!
The 1996 season started well enough for me and my teammate, Kristian Kolby from Denmark. I won the second race of the series at Brands Hatch and led the championship for a while, then had a run of absolute rubbish results. I spun out of the lead at Oulton Park; I threw Thruxton away because I was way out in front and cruising and thinking about other things rather than concentrating on the race, and all in front of Alan Docking, an expatriate Australian who enjoyed a very big reputation as a successful team owner. Docko, who was eyeing me up for F3 the next
year, went ballistic at me. He was a patriotic, passionate Aussie who knew I had thrown an easy win away. I couldn’t afford to make those mistakes.
I decided then that I wanted to go home. I was homesick; I wasn’t sure what I was doing so far away from my family and friends. Was it all worth it? Was I missing out on what was happening back home? I figured I’d head back Down Under for two or three weeks and have a break, but as soon as I arrived in Australia I saw that everyone was still doing exactly the same thing, nothing had changed. Within two or three days I realised that I was kidding myself; I’d been given a tremendous opportunity over in England and I needed to get my arse back over there again and take that opportunity seriously.
It’s hard to explain just how tough leaving Australia had been, how difficult it was to raise the cash to fly home – always economy, always exhausting. But we were determined to make this work. As Mick Doohan had said to me, it’s a long way to go home with your tail between your legs.
Back in England, Ann and I moved house to Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire, on the edge of motor sport’s equivalent of Silicon Valley. We had started out as teammates and friends on a mission but over time our friendship had deepened into something else. I enjoyed spending time with her and we felt entirely comfortable in each other’s company. Moving to England was a huge step for me and I think it was a case of us needing one another and that’s how the relationship was formed. I had a lot of trust in her as she was in my corner from day one. She fought so hard for me and it was amazing to have a great companion who shared my passion for motor sport. From the beginning, Ann was the only one
on my level (my dad to a lesser degree) who believed that my dream to race in F1 could happen. When you’re sharing that kind of belief with someone, that person lifts you.
In the beginning, Ann and I decided to keep our relationship quiet because in a professional sense it wasn’t going to help my cause if Ann was seen to be extolling the virtues/talents of her boyfriend to heavy-hitters and decision-makers. We didn’t want to risk not being taken seriously, so we always believed it was better for Ann to be seen negotiating as an independent third party. Over the first few years some people may have had their suspicions but certainly up until my first year in F1, we kept the relationship pretty much under wraps.
Being in a relationship with Ann, there was also her son, Luke, to consider. I had spent a lot of time with Luke back in Australia and by the time we were all living together in England, I was already like a big brother to him. To be honest, he was on the sidelines for me in the early days in the UK. He was too young to take to race weekends and I was so focused on what I was trying to do. That’s why, later on in my career, I liked to involve him in some of the opportunities that came my way. I wasn’t a hero to him, though: of course he liked seeing me do well, but he enjoyed other sports more, especially soccer and cricket, and he had his own heroes up on pedestals.
Living in Aylesbury also put me within shouting distance of Silverstone and Alan Docking Racing, even though I was nowhere near close to finalising a deal with him for 1997.
Once I got my head together I had a strong finish to the 1996 championship: four race wins made me the championship runner-up to Kolby. I was in with a chance of winning
the European championship too: I had tasted pole position and victory at what would become one of my favourite circuits, Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium. However, Ralph didn’t let me compete in the last rounds of the championship because he wanted me to focus on the Formula Ford Festival. The European Championship was on the same weekend at Brands so we could have entered but we didn’t want to risk the car – or me – before my second tilt at the festival.
Take it from me, that’s a hard meeting to win, even when you have enjoyed a successful first crack at it, as I had the year before: it’s a lot easier to lose than to come out on top. Michael Schumacher and Kimi Räikkönen rocked up once upon a time and did nothing – that’s the Formula Ford Festival for you.
There were some very fast Formula Ford drivers there and some had been testing on the track for a full week, up to 500 laps in preparation for the racing itself. The track is only a couple of kilometres long, and to get an advantage round there is very, very difficult. It’s Chinese whispers all week about set-ups, tyres, pressures, so you simply try to keep it tight in your own team and figure out what you’re going to use, your gear ratios, your engine. You can’t go there thinking it’s going to be a walk in the park.
Still, I was confident. There were five or six key rivals, the guys to keep an eye on in the heats and semis; I made sure I stayed with them and didn’t give away any grid positions to them. It isn’t a race where you want to be doing too much passing because you only expose yourself to the dreaded DNFs (Did Not Finish), so I wanted to start as far up as possible. There were, as always, a few hotshots from
Europe to contend with, but I qualified on pole position for my heat, and I won that. My race was dry – during the other race there was a bit of a sprinkle so their times were slower – and I found myself on pole for the final.
Pretty soon after the start it was back to normal service: Webber makes a terrible start, drops back to second, it’s a wet race … Yet I knew everything was going to turn out well because it was all happening in slow motion. That feeling comes when you are so in control of the car and yourself that there are no surprises. You really are ahead of every scenario: everything is in hand, as if you’ve been here before. You act instinctively; it’s a matter of muscle memory and reflex. I knew I had the other guys covered, all I had to do was make sure I didn’t stuff it up.
I made it safely through the first lap and I was just starting to line up the race leader. I got a good run out of Clearways on to the straight; he went out wide, I covered that move as well, then thought, ‘I’m going to go round you.’ I got to the middle of the corner – and there were yellow flags everywhere. Someone’s gone off. No! Why has the old bloke upstairs done that to me? So I had to let my man back through again. I put my hand up, let him past, slotted back in behind him, passed him again, built up a lead of more than two seconds – and the red flag came out to signal that the race had been stopped. Restart!