Aussie Grit (29 page)

The track lies adjacent to the famous 22-kilometre long Nordschleife or ‘Green Hell’, as Jackie Stewart nicknamed it. Built in the 1920s, the Nordschleife is still to this day arguably the most dangerous and treacherous track in the world and was the scene of Niki Lauda’s horrific fiery crash in 1976. The modern Nürburgring may not share the same place in history as the original, but it has been the setting for some classic races. It’s a nice undulating track tucked into the Eifel Mountains where the weather often plays a deciding part in the outcome. I always enjoyed racing there.

That Nürburgring weekend was the first time I out-qualified Sebastian Vettel as my Red Bull Racing teammate, and it’s difficult to overstate how significant that was in itself. Ahead of that weekend I had done some of my best physical training sessions, just me and my road bike on the hills in the south of France. Ann and I had also paid a visit to Dublin for a few days with Mum and Dad and my auntie Pam and uncle Nigel, who were on their first European trip. In the end I decided to go home early because there was no gym in our hotel and the weather was dreadful. Before I left
I thought it was essential to try some of Dublin’s famous black velvet – a pint or two of Guinness! There were some workers on the local road who recognised me and yelled out that I was going to win the next race …

It was critical for me to take some of the wind out of Sebastian’s sails, not only in terms of the championship but in the context of the team we both drove for. Once a driver starts to gain a bit of momentum, it’s only natural that other people will gravitate towards him, so it was important to try to get my own winning campaign underway. It wasn’t until Q3 that the top 10 got to see a dry track for the first time in what seemed quite a while. It all came down to my last run: I was the first of the front-runners to post my final flying lap and two purple sectors put me on top with a 1:32.320. Both Brawns and Sebastian had still to go: my teammate went second-fastest, was demoted by both Jenson and Rubens, but none of them could beat my time. After the sheer elation had passed, I commented that I would really like a nice, boring GP next day to cash in on my maiden F1 pole position.

Race day dawned, and it was wet. It rained before seven in the morning but had dried by 11. Rain was forecast for later in the race but a dry start would be something. Within seconds of the start I was in a spot of bother: where the hell was Rubens? The little Brazilian had got the jump on me off the line and as I tried to fight back I lost sight of him momentarily. It wasn’t until I hit him that I realised where he was. It looked quite dramatic from the outside: the two cars seemed to cannon off each other like billiard balls. I’ve spoken to Rubens about it and he said he was adjusting something on his steering-wheel. I’ve looked at the
on-board camera footage and he wasn’t, but he said he was about to and was distracted for a split second. The contact was minimal, both cars were undamaged: I wasn’t squeezing him, it was in the middle of the track.

My troubles weren’t over: Lewis had also made a quick getaway in his McLaren, good enough for him to attempt a pretty daring move on me into the first corner. My front wing clipped his left rear tyre and the inevitable happened: he got a puncture. While the World Champion dealt with that little problem Rubens and I started putting some distance between us and the rest of the field. I was comfortable enough being behind, as I knew he was on a lighter load and was sure to be three-stopping. Then the call came: the race stewards had studied the start, decided they didn’t like the dramatic coming-together they had seen, and given me a drive-through penalty for the offence of ‘causing an avoidable collision’.

That was it: all the hard work that went into getting that pole position counted for nothing, the first five seconds of the race had squandered any advantage I had, and now the law-makers were on my back as well. All I could think was, ‘It’s just not meant to be.’

So I came in to serve my sentence, as it were, on lap 15, but first I made sure I put a gap on Heikki Kovalainen, who was doing a useful job of bottling up the likes of Jenson and Sebastian behind his McLaren. Once I got back out there I had Ciaron Pilbeam, my race engineer, trying to reassure me and tell me I could still win this thing. My first scheduled stop arrived on lap 19 and I rejoined eighth, which quickly became second again as the others went in and out of pit lane. When Rubens made his second stop that put me in the lead.

Two threats remained, one called rain, the other Vettel. The rain never came; Sebastian led after my second stop on lap 43 but still had his own stop to come and I was back in front. I was now closing out the win, everything was absolutely under control, but I remember asking Ciaron to confirm that I was starting my last lap. I wanted to triple-check as Roger, who doubled as my pit-board man for a couple of years, was liable to be the odd lap out because he sometimes forgot to hang out my board! It usually happened when I was racing in a pack and he was excited. I could see him looking at me over the wall, cheering me on, but he didn’t have the pit board, which made me laugh! But this time the laps had been counted correctly and after 130 races, and 232 days after breaking my leg on a Tasmanian bush road, I was a Grand Prix winner.

Maybe there’s something in what they say about the luck of the Irish after all because those blokes in Dublin had been right! The journey had led me down several blind alleys, I had hit several unexpected obstacles, yet here I was: on the top step of the podium at one of the most famous racing circuits in the world, the famous Nürburgring.

I hadn’t won a race in a long, long time, and finally winning a Grand Prix was very different from my previous visit to the top step. People’s perceptions of me instantly changed: Mark Webber, race-winner in F1 … and the most important thing of all for me was that I absolutely deserved to win. The race may have been a mirror image of the stop–start career that preceded it, but we were always going to win on that day. It meant so much to me that it was a genuine victory, not one of those races handed to you by sheer force of circumstance.

There were two people with me that day that I really wanted to hug. One was my dad, who had guided me away from Australia and into single-seater racing in the first place and backed me every step of the way. He injected a comical note of his own into the proceedings – one of his front teeth had fallen out that very morning and he couldn’t crack a decent smile for the rest of the day! But he well remembers that first win: ‘Something I had never told Mark was that in my many years of following motor racing I had formed a great admiration for a New Zealand driver called Chris Amon. The general consensus about Chris was that he was a very talented but unlucky driver. I watched him quite a bit: he contested 96 Grands Prix but never won one. He was second three times, third eight times, but never first. Well, at one stage I thought, “Mark’s going to be a bit like Chris Amon, all that talent, but never quite in the right place at the right time – he’s just never going to jag one.” But finally he did, I was on the pit wall – minus a front tooth – and it was a fantastic day.’

The other person I had to hug was Ann: her plan had got me here, her support had kept me going through all the ups and downs. This wasn’t my day, it was ours. And while Dad was having his problems smiling, Flavio came out with the comment that it was the first time he had ever seen Annie smile!

I was also looking forward to hearing the Australian national anthem – for me. I love sport, I’m very patriotic to our flag and about us as a sporting nation, which is how most of the rest of the world perceives us. I had been to watch Jason Crump winning in speedway in front of a full house, and even Dad had goosebumps when Crumpy won and we heard the national anthem.

I thought then, ‘I want to do that one day …’

I was a Grand Prix winner at last, the first Australian since Jack and Alan who had had a chance to fly the flag. I had done it my way, and perhaps a little bit differently. I shared the podium with Felipe Massa and Seb, and I will always remember Felipe looking across at me and saying, ‘It’s a good feeling, isn’t it?’

Most of all, my own question – ‘Can I do this?’ – had been answered. On my slow-down lap after crossing the line I gave vent to all those pent-up emotions. It went something like this: ‘Woo-hoo! Yee-hah! Yes! Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes! Ha-ha! Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!!’

I think it meant: ‘Yes, I can.’

There was just one little cloud on that memorable day. It drifted over when a well-known television commentator came into the Red Bull hospitality area in the immediate aftermath of the race. As he looked around the place at other members of the team he asked Ann, ‘Why the long faces?’ Then the penny dropped: ‘Ah, I see,’ he added. ‘The wrong driver won!’ It was a telling comment and although it did nothing to spoil our pleasure, we realised later that it went right to the heart of the matter. There was a bit of celebration and showbiz for the cameras but it was clear some of the senior management weren’t all that happy that I had turned the tables and won in Seb’s own backyard.

After Germany I felt I had got through another stretch of uncharted waters: pole position and a Grand Prix victory. Clearly a lot of other people thought the same! My first pole attracted something like 90 messages, and that figure seemed to double after I won the race. I didn’t realise so many people had my bloody contact details but I was blown
away to receive messages from world champions like Sir Jack Brabham, Nigel Mansell, Jody Scheckter, Valentino Rossi, Troy Bayliss, Casey Stoner and so many of my racing colleagues and friends.

Twenty-four hours later I was enjoying the company of the Australian Test team, who had been such an inspiration to me and were in the UK on an Ashes tour. Ricky Ponting was hosting a foundation dinner for the charity he had established and it was phenomenal to be with some of my cricketing heroes. But they seemed to think I’d done something pretty heroic in my own field and I was given a heart-warming reception. Luke and I went to Lord’s again to watch some cricket later that week and I was overwhelmed by the response of people around me on the train heading into London and then at the hallowed ground.

A funny moment happened when the Aussies invited Luke and me down to their dressing-shed. Luke’s a massive cricket fan and devoted to the Baggy Green, but he was completely overawed and speechless when he was introduced to the Australian captain. Ricky was great, Luke was silent. He’d met the likes of Fernando Alonso, Lewis Hamilton, Jenson Button and Sebastian Vettel over the years but cricketers were on another level as far as he was concerned. He’d seen so much of them on TV, they were pros, the real deal. We spoke to Ricky and the rest of the lads, and of course we had a lot in common, but Luke came away as if it was his first date with a supermodel – he should have said and done a lot more! ‘That was crap,’ he grumbled as we were going down the stairs. ‘I had so many questions to ask Ricky but I froze.’

Another happy memory of that day in Germany was that my buddy Bernd Schneider was there to see me win.
He never managed it himself in F1, but he played a role in helping me get there and he sent me a nice message after the race to say how happy he was that he was so close to me on such a special day. Soon after I got home there was another one: a telegram from Bernie Ecclestone. It was pretty special, not only for the kind words: it was made entirely of silver.

The next step was to keep the momentum going but after another podium in Hungary our charge stalled. Valencia, Spa, Monza and Singapore came and went without any more points, but the prospect of returning to Suzuka for the first time in three years helped lift the spirits. The circuit has always been one of my favourites and I felt sure we could pull off a great result there.

‘We’ did, in the sense that a Red Bull Racing car won the race. Unfortunately it wasn’t mine. A free practice ‘off’ meant I missed qualifying, started from pit lane – and had to come straight back in when my headrest worked loose. Out again, same thing, in again. A puncture on the fourth lap meant all I could do was treat the rest of the afternoon as an unscheduled test session. I was the last classified finisher in 17th place. When that happens, not even the satisfaction of another fastest lap is enough to redeem the weekend. That was the first time in 2009 where I felt there was a very good result to be had and I wasn’t there to get it. Suzuka was a low point, no doubt about it.

I had never scored a point in seven attempts at Interlagos in Brazil, but I had to stop beating myself up and move the bar up another level. As a result I went to Brazil better prepared than ever. Heavy rain made qualifying very long – two and three-quarter hours, to be precise – and very
dangerous, and in the end a small mistake meant I couldn’t quite match hometown hero Rubens Barrichello as he took his third Brazilian pole position. Still, I knew we were in good shape to give Brawn a run for their money the following day. To ensure we did, I was rather harsh and leant on Kimi Räikkönen at the start and took his front wing off. It was crucial he didn’t come past me; he had KERS and I didn’t, so passing him later would have been hard.

I came through unscathed as the safety car came out. When it retreated after four laps Rubens opened up a handy little gap, but he pitted after 21 laps and lost ground when he came back out in traffic. His absence freed me up to reel off some quick laps, including fastest race lap for the third time that season, and I was still ahead when I emerged from my own first stop. My second was as well executed as the first, I got out just ahead of JB, a puncture cost Rubens any chance of a home win, and I was home free: a second win to go with the big breakthrough in Germany.

It had felt like playing chess, where we had the advantage of knowing all the moves that were coming and being ready to counter-punch. It also confirmed the runner-up spot for Red Bull in the Constructors’ Championship, and my green-and-gold chest was puffed out even more when my good mate Jason Crump took out the World Speedway title that same weekend and Casey Stoner won the Australian MotoGP down at Phillip Island. After the Brazil race Valentino Rossi sent me a text:
Two is double of one!
which I think was Italian for
There’s a lot more to come
. Whatever the translation, it meant a great deal to me and helped me realise that when you achieve at sport’s highest levels, you
have a natural affinity with people who have also competed on the world stage.