mark webber wants to become world champion - and he has a good shot at it on sunday...
today, tomorrow and on thursday i will publish posts taking a closer look at each one of the three championship contenders (lewis hamilton will be ignored in this one). and i’ll start today with the aussie mark webber.
in most polls all around the web, if asked who people favor for the title this year (and not who you think will actually get the gold), mark webber comes out victorious. and this has quite a few reasons, the most popular are these: he is the underdog, it’s probably his last chance to fight for the title (since he’s the oldest), he’s the most handsome, he’s the nicest. in general, people love it when specialists are wrong, and they have never really regarded mark webber as someone deserving of the formula one driver’s championship. and it seems pretty likely that mark can do the trick. but before we look at the irony of life, let’s look back to his career.
when mark was 20 years old, he finally moved to england to persue his dream of a f1 cockpit. over 13 years ago, he started his first formula 3 championship, but even with some good results there, in formula 3000, in fia gt and even le mans, it took him another five years to land a job in formula one – and at the smallest team on the grid, minardi. his career had really started when he earned a job test driving benetton for 2001, and became a personal client of his then teamchef, flavio briatore. flavio arranged a seat at the also italian minardi (replacing also briatore-client alonso, who replaced webber as a test driver for benetton) and webber had his first race at home, in the australian gp 2002. he actually finished in the points in that race, the only points the team would pick up in the entire year; still, mark webber was voted rookie of the year for that feat and for being faster than his team mate yoong in every single qualifying and race. in that vote, he beat the other rookies including felipe massa and takuma sato. this earned him a seat at jaguar, then the seventh best team on the grid.
as a rookie of the year, for minardi
mark webber proved himself in that he once again gave his team mate not a bit of a chance; when the brazilian antonio pizzonia, who had tested for then giants williams the previous season, was fired, mark webber had scored incredible 13 points, against zero from his team mate. at the end, jaguar ended up in seventh place in the cosntructor’s, but webber was tenth, carrying 17 of the 18 team points. although he was now a sought after driver, his age was never an advantage, since he was already 27 at the beginning of the 2004 championship, another season for jaguar. his new team mate was the austrian christian klien, who just recently came back to f1 in the hrt team.
mark webber had eight top ten finishes that season (against 4 by klien) and scored 7 points, out of ten for the team. jaguar, still seventh best constructor, wasn’t progressing, and mark webber knew that this would be his chance to fight for podiums or even the championship – if he could only get a new job for 2005! he’d proven himself in three pretty good season, taking easily care of his competition within the team. and he wasn’t getting any younger.
and he did get a pretty good job. williams f1 wasn’t at the top any more, but it was still the fourth best car in the grid, destined to always be in the points. 2004 found them finishing on the podium only four times, though, but with one victory in the last race, by juan pablo montoya. it was a bad year for williams, who had slipped from ferrari-chasers number one to fourth, and they wanted to come back. montoya and ralf schumacher left the team powered by bmw, and nick heidfeld joined mark webber for a brand new season and attempt to get back to the top.
it wasn’t good season for williams, and it was even worse for mark webber. for the first time in his career, his team mate was getting better results than him: the german nick heidfeld had three podium finishes in the first seven races, two of them as the race’s runner-up. webber managed a third place, his first podium, in monaco – but heidfeld finished second there. after the turkish grand prix, heidfeld had scored 28 points, 4 more than webber. then he suffered two different accidents and had to sit out the remainder of the season; antonio pizzonia, webber’s former team mate, replaced the german for the remainder of the season. and it was the same as two year earlier – pizzonia scored two points, webber 12. still, williams had slipped behind toyota and mclaren and were now only the fifth best car in the grid.
horrible accident in montreal for webber in the williams
bmw left the team for the 2006 season; mark would be 30, and williams didn’t seem to improve. a new and young driver replaced heidfeld, and it was another german: nico rosberg, today maybe one of the most valued drivers in formula one. as a rookie, rosberg didn’t have the same results as webber. everytime they both finished a race, webber ended up in front of his young team mate, but he retired a massive 11 times and only scored 7 points in this, the most disappointing year of his career. rosberg retired eleven times and had 4 points, leaving the williams team with an all time low of 11 points in a single season; that was eight place, behind bmw sauber, honda, toyota and even red bull ferrari, at the time with coulthard and klien as drivers.
this is when mark webber decided to switch from a rapidly declining team to a seemingly ascending one: red bull racing became the aussie’s home in 2007, and many experts judged that the once promising driver had just given up on any win or title hopes, similarly to his much more successful new team mate, david coulthard. red bull started seventh in the constructor’s hierachy that year, which meant that they would hope for one or the other point. it took webber seven races to get his first two points for red bull, and at the end of the season he had 10 points, 4 less than coulthard. still, it wasn’t to be considered a loss (or a win), since webber won the qualifying duel and did normally beat the scot when both finshed a race (which only happened four times), most famously in the european gp, when he got his second career podium finish in a great day for red bull. still, webber needed to prove the world and himself that he could beat an opponent like david coulthard, himself a gp winner, but not one of the greats in the sport. by the way, after that podium finish, the daughter team toro rosso (used to be minardi), bought by red bull to train and observe young talent, fired the american scott speed and hired the young german sebastian vettel…
red bull racing had rise to fifth place in the f1 hierachy, and wanted to go higher in 2008. webber had a good start to the year, finishing in the points in six out of the first eight races and getting his tally up to 18 points before the middle of the season. coulthard had finished on the podium once in these races (which webber hadn’t managed), but that was his only point finish, so he only had a third of his opponent’s points at the time. things seemed to be going well for webber. but the second half of that season was to become pretty humiliating.
webber only managed 3 additional points in the last 10 races, still one more than his british team mate. but the tragic in it was the performance of the daughter team toro rosso; destined to be a true second team with theoretically second hand material and a much smaller budget, the frenchman bourdais scored two points and finished in front of webber three times. much worse, though, was the performance of young german sebastian vettel. even without his incredible victory in monza, vettel scored 20 points in those 10 races – and with he victory, a whopping 30, ten times as many as mark webber’s! as vettel accepted red bull’s offer to move up to the main team in replacement of the retiring coulthard, the f1 world was asking itself if that wasn’t a major downstep for the german. and webber knew: here comes someone younger than me, praised by f1 boss ecclestone himself, and destined to be the future of the team. and what seemed worse: he seemed to be a better driver.
that would be a first for webber, who had been miles ahead of yoon and pizzonia, and slightly, rosberg and coulthard. only heidfeld was at the same level or slightly above him. but vettel could be a problem. to be a number two driver anywhere is a career breaker. at least the kind of career that looks for victories and world championships.
webber’s fears came true. although he was glad that red bull went from seventh to second best car of the season in one year, his first two victories and fourth place finish in the world championship were personal highlights, for sure. after all, when the won the german grand prix in july last year, he was almost 33 years old. but vettel outshone him in what was supposed to be his moment, in this 8th season of f1 circus. 4 wins, best man of the second half and elected the best driver of the year (instead of world champion jenson button), vettel was the man of the season for red bull and for most f1 specialists. and the defeats in qualifying, once webber’s domain, were normal. webber ended the season with few mistakes and 69.5 points, vettel ended it with more mistakes and still 84 points. and he would enter the year 2010 as one of the main contenders for the crown.
the irony is that vettel has been faster than webber most of the year, and will probably be on sunday, again. still, webber depends on his enemy in the team to be world champ. even if the aussie manages to win the race on his own merit coming weekend, he needs vettel to be second, in front of alonso (who is driving the second best car, currently). if vettel where to finish third or below, alonso’s second place would guarentee the spaniard’s title. and there’s still the more likely option of vettel having to hand webber the world title in the last round, which would be gentlemanlike, but still pretty humiliating. even for an underdog world champion.
will it be this time, mark? now or never!
webber came into formula one replacing fernando alonso after his successful rookie season at minardi. alonso got webber’s job of testing the benetton. now, alonso has two world titles, both for benetton, and is close to the third. irony wherever you look in the small world of formula one.
the [sports] observer 