Webber after winning the 2009 Brazilian Grand Prix - Photo © Red Bull/Getty Images

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Aussie Mark Webber originally started out on two wheels racing motorbikes – hardly surprising given that he is the son of Alan, a motorcycle dealer. However in 1991 he took up karting. He won the New South Wales state championship in ’93 and moved to the Australian Formula Ford championship. He took 14th in his debut season. Continuing in the Formula Ford championship in 1995 he was much improved, and took several race victories. He finished 4th in the championship and teamed up with Ann Neal – the Australian Formula Ford coordinator, who secured him a sponsorship deal with the Australian Yellow Pages, and later became his manager. Neal accompanied Webber on a trip to England in a bid to start a career in Europe.

Following a successful test with the Van Diemen team, Webber earned a works drive with them for the 1995 Formula Ford Festival at Brands Hatch. He finished third and was promptly given a drive with the team for the 1996 British Formula Ford championship. He had a successful championship, winning 4 races and took 2nd overall. He also won the Formula Ford Festival and the Spa round of the Formula Ford Euro Cup. Webber was awarded Australian motorsport’s “Young Achiever” and “International Achiever” of 1996. At the end of the season, Webber had a successful test with the Alan Docking Racing, with whom he would drive in the Formula 3 championship for in 1997.

In Formula Three, Webber had a financial struggle, and financial backing from Aussie rugby union player David Campese saved Webber’s team from collapse at the eleventh hour. Webber finished 4th in the championship.

For 1998, Webber signed as the official Mercedes works junior driver for the 1998 FIA GT Championship, after impressing Mercedes-AMG at a test in Austria at the A1-Ring. Webber and teammate Bernd Schneider made a good partnership and finished 2nd in the championship. Webber continued with the team for 1999 before Mercedes stopped their sportscar program, due to Webber and his teammate both flipping spectacularly on the straight at Le Mans due to an aerodynamic fault.

After a successful test with the team, Webber was signed as a test driver with the Arrows for the 2000 season, whilst also competing in Formula 3000. He finished third overall, the highest position a rookie had managed in the series that year. He had contract issues and never got to drive for the Arrows, but earned himself a test with Benetton in which he impressed, so much so the team signed him up in a test role for 2001.

He was replaced in this seat in 2002 by Fernando Alonso, but Webber’s then-manager Flavio Briatore managed to secure him a role in a race seat for the first time, at the Minardi team. He was the first Australian in Formula 1 since David Brabham in 2004.

His Formula 1 debut was on home soil in Melbourne, and he finished an incredible 5th after qualifying 18th after a massive crash forced a eight cars into premature retirement. That was Webber’s only points throughout the entire season, but even still he did enough to attract the attention of Jaguar for 2003.

He impressed with the midfield runners managing 3rd on the grid twice, and finished 10th in the drivers’ championship. He had a very disappointing 2004 though as Jaguar dropped further and further down the pecking order, and that was to be his last year driving under the Jaguar name, as they sold their team to Red Bull and Webber departed for Williams.

Mark Webber driving for Williams at Interlagos in 2006 - Photo © Williams/LAT

The once great Williams team were stuck in a rut and were rapidly slipping towards the back of the grid. In 2005 Webber managed 10th place in the championship, with the following year even more disappointing, hampered by reliability issues. He ended the season with just seven points and left the team at the end of the year for Red Bull, the team he was at under the Jaguar name two years before.

In stark contrast to Williams, Red Bull were a team on the up thanks to a substantial financial injection from the energy drink manufacturer. Webber teamed up with Scot David Coulthard. However the RB3 was very unreliable and despite showing glimpses of brilliance such as taking third at the German Grand Prix, he wasn’t yet able to show his true potential. He was running 2nd at Fuji before being wiped out by future teammate Sebastian Vettel, a rivalry which would spiral upwards and come to a head three years later, in 2010.

Mark Webber driving for Red Bull at Monaco in 2008 - Photo © Red Bull/Getty Images

Despite not scoring any podiums in 2008, Webber went one better than the year before and took 11th in the drivers’ championship ahead of teammate David Coulthard. He consistently scored points over the first half of the season, but the RB4′s pace dropped off as the races wore on and he found it more and more difficult to keep up near the front.

He had no such trouble in 2009 though, when Webber took his first ever Grand Prix win after 130 races in waiting, despite being handed a drive-through penalty at the Nurburgring. The quick RB5 couldn’t match the Brawn GP car driven by Jenson Button in the opening races of the season, but as the races went by Webber was ever nearer to the front. Sadly, a mixture of driver error and reliability issues led to a 4th position overall at the end of the season. This is even more incredible considering a horrendous bike crash at the start of the season threatened his career altogether.

2010 was a very mixed year for Mark Webber, and was struggling at a team which was clearly favouring his younger teammate Sebastian Vettel. Their rivalry came to a head at the Turkish Grand Prix when the pair came to blows. Despite it being clearly Vettel’s fault, Webber came under fire from Red Bull’s motorsport consultant Dr Helmut Marko. However Webber used this as motivation and held the lead in the championship throughout a number of races, winning in Spain, Monaco, Britain and Hungary. He was the favourite to win the title going into the final three races of the season, but disaster struck when he crashed out of the inaugural Korean Grand Prix, and was unable to recover from that moment on.

Webber will continue at Red Bull into 2011.

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