Everyone strives for a second chance. Mark Webber is no different. Last year’s Le Mans 24 Hours saw him eventually flat out on the Mulsanne Straight on the race day. He may have left the circuit empty-handed, but with a sense relief and renewed determination - despite retiring the #20, 919 Hybrid at the 22 hour mark.
“If you fall off a bike you should get back on immediately. I didn’t have this chance at Le Mans, I have to go back again.” Speaking of his leaving from Formula 1 to WEC, Webber showed his determination in the new adventure.
13 years in F1 with nine wins under his belt, Webber established a reputation for his mighty spirit. Unfortunately, he missed the world title in 2010 - which was the only real chance that he ever had in his whole career - before making the decision to join Porsche’s return-to Le Mans programme three years later.
He admitted that he had had less motivation than before; thet the former Red Bull driver, perhaps, felt tired of the intense relationship with his teammate Sebastian Vettel - who ignored ‘multi 21’ team orders and passed him at 2013 Malaysian Grand Prix that in hindsight was Webber’s last opportunity to win a grand prix.
“F1 was a long career for me. I enjoyed it until the end. Probably the motivation was not as it was when you were 22 because of the huge amount of travel when you have a lot of commitments,” said Webber.
“In the end they were quite demanding. You had a choice if you wanted to continue. It’s not easy to operate at that level when you are not 100 per cent focused. I was enjoying a new change. It was a less intense program. I realised I still wanted to race.
Porsche was a very exciting news for me on their return. It is a very famous brand. For me to come back to help them with the program was a good option. And the program is fitting very well with this stage of my career.”
The 38-year-old Australian had two attempts at Le Mans before being part of Mercedes’ sports car program back in 1998 and 1999, but never got the chance to show his ability in the pinnacle of endurance racing. It was a cruel irony that after he suffered a second terrifying accident at the same weekend in 1999 in which the Mercedes prototype became airborne and crashed heavily on the Mulsanne Straight in qualifying, the German manufacture decided to pull out and has never returned since.
15 years later – on the cusp of midnight - Webber finally jumped into the cockpit of #20 Porsche 919 Hybrid and made his genuine debut at the highest level competition of sports car.
“Yeah, it’s a very different series,” say Mark of the difference between F1 and sports cars. “You have many drivers in one car (in WEC). We have three, with Timo (Bernhard), Brendon (Hartley) and me sharing the car #20. So that is already a big change from F1 where you have a car built to yourself. ”
We have big endurance components of the races. 6 hours is the shortest race with 1000km. Of course Le Mans is about 5000km and 24 hours. So it is very, very different mentally to F1. But we still need to have huge focus on precision to improve the car as much as we can. But I think the dynamics of having multiple teammates and working hard with them is the biggest step of all issues. ”