Mark Webber Profile - Jaguar Formula One

Mark Webber grew up in Qeanbeyan, New South Wales.

Mark was relatively old when he started karting, at around 15 years of age. His father, seeing little point in him remaining in this category bought Mark a Van Dieman FF1600 Formula Ford. Mark was quickly on the pace in this category soon heading to Britain to make his mark in the category. He tested in snetterton, convincing Ralph Firman Sr that he was worthy of support. He finished third in his first Formula ford festival at Brands Hatch in ’95 and won it outright the following year.

He now expected to get into Formula three. Unfortunately a lack of financial support, from his own country, was going to put an end to his European racing career.

Alan Docking stepped in and, with the help of a few other Aussies, managed to get Mark into a competitive Formula three drive.

Mark met Mercedes’ Norbert Haug at the Formula One ball in Melbourne that year made himself known to Mercedes as a driver with promise. A few weeks later Mark got a call from Mercedes wanting him to race a sports car in a weeks time – they’d been following his progress and were impressed by his results. Mark said no. What he wanted was tests, followed by races.

He continued to shine in F3 and eventually Mercedes came back to him offering tests with the chance of races in sportscars – the cars that helped the careers of Michael Schumacher and Heinz Harald Frentzen. He drove well, earning the respect of Team-mate Bernd Scheider. Eventually though, it ended with the well publicised flips at Le Mans. He flipped twice, once in practice then again on race day. When his team-mate also flipped Mercedes withdrew from the sportscar campaign.

Mark decided it was time to get back into single seaters. Amid talk of Cart and McLaren tests, because of his links with Mercedes, Mark asked Eddie Jordan for a ride. Eddie suggested that Mark speak to Paul Stoddart who was starting his own Formula 3000 team. Paul gave Mark another opportunity to show his talent.

F3000 was a big gamble for mark, mainly because he was 24 and not in what was considered a top team. Fortunately, with Mark behind the wheel the team became regular podium finishers. Towards the end of the year Mark was given the chance to test for Benetton(now Renault). Mark flew and was given a test contract for ’01.

Mark again drove in F3000, this time for the championship winning Supernova team. He won several races, including Monaco, but some say his aggressive driving (he either finished on the Podium or crashed out) combined with his commitment to testing F1 cars jeopardised his chance of winning the title, eventually won by Justin Wilson.

For 2002 Flavio Briatore finally got Webber the F1 drive he’d been looking for. He drove for Minardi, where he again had fellow aussie Paul Stoddart as his boss. He did the impossible finishing 5th place in his maiden race in his home country in a Minardi(a nice first corner/first lap mishap that took out much of the field helped). In other races he continued to get the underpowered Minardi were it had no right to be, blowing away his team-mate and was likely to score more points at Monaco........until a tyre delaminated. 2003 sees him at Jaguar and so far he’s proving to be a great asset