If you live in Australia here’s an opportunity for you to race Mark Webber and raise some money for good causes at the same time. As a warm up for his gruelling Tasmania Challenge event, Webber is offering all levels of runners the chance to compete against him in a sponsored “Adventure Run” around the Hobart waterfront in Tasmania. The run will take place on December 4th in aid of the Mark Webber Foundation and Save the Tasmanian Devil foundation. The Swisse Mark Webber Tasmania Challenge Adventure Run is being held three days prior to the main event; a tough More…

After last year’s Brazilian Grand Prix, Red Bull owner Dietrich Mateschitz articulated his philosophy of why his drivers would be allowed to race each other right to the end and the team would not intervene, “Let the two drivers race and what will be will be,” he said. “If Alonso wins we will have been unlucky. I predict a Hollywood ending. Worst case scenario we don’t become champion? We’ll do it next year. “But our philosophy stays the same because this is sport and it must remain sport. We don’t manipulate things like Ferrari do.” He got his Hollywood ending More…

Mark Webber and Sam Michael are among the Australian contingent in F1 who are clubbing together to raise money for legendary speedway rider Leigh Adams, who sustained serious injuries from an off-road motorcycle accident while training for the Finke Desert Race a few weeks ago. Now he has a long rehabilitation in front of him. Adams is a 10 times Australian speedway champion and he raced in the world championship, winning multiple Grands Prix before returning to Australia about 6 months ago. He’s essentially the Peter Brock of speedway in Australia! Michael and Webber, both friends of Adams, along with More…

Mark Webber took pole position for the British Grand Prix ahead of his team mate Sebastian Vettel, with Fernando Alonso in third just a tenth of second off pole position. The McLarens were over a second behind with Jenson Button, while Lewis Hamilton was disappointed to be down in 10th place for his home Grand Prix. Webber said that the front row lock out didn’t prove anything after the row over the throttle mapping in the run up to qualifying. At an emergency meeting of the Technical Working group it was decided that the cars would all run with 10% More…

Red Bull driver Mark Webber has been the first Formula 1 competitor, either team or driver, to make a statement about the FIA’s decision yesterday to reinstate the Bahrain Grand Prix on October 30th. Writing on his own website he said that he personally is fearful of travelling to the country to compete in an event which has been singled out by protesters as a rallying point for dissent. “As a competitor I do not feel at all comfortable going there to compete in an event when, despite reassurances to the contrary, it seems inevitable that it will cause more More…

I came across these two videos of two of F1′s leading drivers Mark Webber and Nico Rosberg, formerly team mates at Williams. One is a video blog, the second that Rosberg has done from the back seat of his Mercedes limo as he speeds toward the private aviation terminal at the airport, no doubt. It’s good to get a driver to share his thoughts immediately after the race, like this. Rosberg reflects on Mercedes pace in the race and his own performance. He lost the start to his team mate Michael Schumacher and couldn’t get back in front. The other More…

Mark Webber took his first pole position of the season for tomorrow’s Spanish Grand Prix, repeating his Barcelona pole of last season, ahead of Sebastian Vettel and Lewis Hamilton. The superiority of the Red Bull car was confirmed as the gap between Webber and Hamilton was a second. It was the first pole for the Australian since last September. However Vettel had a problem with his KERS in qualifying and was forced to run without using it, giving up around 4/10ths of a second. Webber’s margin over him was exactly 2/10ths. Fernando Alonso managed to split the McLarens for fourth More…

The grey overcast skies and light drizzle in the Istanbul paddock make for a lifeless, gloomy sort of atmosphere. Drivers huddle in their rain jackets, stepping over puddles on their way from garage to motorhome. The latest forecast is for it to improve from Saturday, which is a relief. Add in the total lack of crowd or any kind of buzz around the event and F1 seems to be in a sterile bubble this weekend, going about its business behind closed doors. But it still has to put on a show and luckily there is a lot going on in More…

Mark Webber set the fastest time in both practice sessions on the first day of the Malaysian Grand Prix weekend. The Red Bull driver headed Jenson Button by 0.005s in the second session, with Lewis Hamilton third and Sebastian Vettel fourth as Red Bull had the KERS on its car working today. The rest of the field was over a second behind, with Ferrari admitting that they are a little off the pace again. Sepang has always been a strong track for Webber – he once put a Jaguar on the front row and has outqualified team mate Sebastian Vettel More…

Mark Webber has relaunched his gruelling end of season adventure race the Tasmania Challenge, despite it almost costing him his career in 2008 when a serious bike accident broke his leg and shoulder. And he’s not ruling out taking part in it again. The event will take place on December 7-11. Webber has secured sponsorship from Swisse Multivitamins, an Australian brand and backing from the Tasmania Tourist Office and other sponsors like LG and Red Bull, which means the event will take place for the next three years. The five day event challenges competitors to kayak, trail, trek, mountain bike More…

This week, I had the chance after the last test in Barcelona to interview Mark Webber about testing so far and his thoughts on the season ahead, particularly his ongoing battle with Sebastian Vettel. He makes some very interesting observations about the Pirelli tyres and how they have made F1 like a ‘different category’. He also talks about the things he has taken from last season’s campaign, which will make him a stronger competitor this year. When asked about whether it will be ‘happy families’ with team mate Sebastian Vettel – given the aggro that existed between them last year More…

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner has admitted that his driver Mark Webber should have told him about the shoulder fracture he suffered before the Japanese Grand Prix this season. Yesterday morning JA on F1 broke the story that Webber had driven the last four races of the season with a broken shoulder. The 34 year old made the admission in his new book that he suffered a second mountain bike accident in two years resulting in a fractured shoulder, ironically the first time he’d been on a mountain bike since his collision with a vehicle in Tasmania. Horner said More…

One possible reason why Mark Webber’s form in the crucial final four races of the season declined is a fractured shoulder from yet another mountain bike accident, shortly before the Japanese Grand Prix. The 34 year old travelled back to Australia after the Singapore Grand Prix and went out on a mountain bike ride when he injured himself again. He was following a friend who fell and with nowhere to go, Webber crashed into him and fractured his shoulder. It is what is known as a “skier’s fracture”, because the most common reason for that type of break is a More…

Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel have buried the hatchet after a season long duel for supremacy in the Red Bull team. The duo, who looked at times as though they were shaping up to reprise the bitter Senna/Prost team rivalry of the 1990s, have revealed that they spoke at length during the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix weekend and put their differences behind them. Webber also revealed that once the competition was over, and Vettel emerged victorious, it was important for him to drop his competitive guard and bow down to the younger man’s achievement. “I went to him, ” said More…

A rather crestfallen Mark Webber faced the music this evening in the Abu Dhabi paddock after a disappointing qualifying session. Webber starts fifth behind all of his title rivals. The Aussie, who lies second in the championship, eight points behind Fernando Alonso, was never really on the pace of his teammate Sebastian Vettel. He was three tenths slower in Q1, two tenths slower in Q2 and then six tenths slower in Q3, when it counted. “The last couple of minutes (of Q3) were not the best for me,” said Webber. “I didn’t really have the performance in myself of the More…

The cramped and chaotic paddock at Interlagos always creates a feverish atmosphere and this weekend is no different. Teams are cheek by jowl with each other, journalists have to climb over tables and squeeze into corners to hear what’s being said at briefings and today we have seen a very calm Fernando Alonso and a Mark Webber who has chosen to cast himself as an underdog again. Alonso spoke about his team mate Felipe Massa and how he’d like him to win the last two races. This is his way of saying that he’d like Massa to be really fast More…

Championship leader Mark Webber set the fastest time on the first day of running at the new Korean International Circuit, ahead of title rivals Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton. Robert Kubica and Felipe Massa were both in the top six. Neither are title contenders, but they could take important points off the five drivers who are, this weekend. A lot of laps were covered today, with most drivers doing a race distance or close to it, across the two practice sessions. The first impressions of the new circuit in Korea are pretty positive, despite the negativity in the build up More…

This extraordinary championship has – hopefully – four more chapters in store for us. The title is still Mark Webber’s to lose; he has the fastest car and a ten point advantage. He has also had a couple of slices of “champions’ luck” this year and he has shown a willingness to gamble, in which I’m very interested. Meanwhile Fernando Alonso is the man with the momentum. He and Ferrari are peaking at just the right moment. In the last five races Alonso has scored 93 points, Webber 74, Vettel 60, Hamilton 55 and Button 44. Amazingly if you look More…

Fernando Alonso won the Singapore Grand Prix by a margin of just 0.2 seconds after a race long battle with Sebastian Vettel on a day when the gloves well and truly came off between championship rivals Mark Webber and Lewis Hamilton. The pair, who were one and two in the championship going into the race, were fighting for third place when they collided following a restart from a safety car period. It was Alonso’s 25th career victory, putting him level with the great Jim Clark and only two behind Jackie Stewart. More significantly it was his third win in five More…

Red Bull got their 12th pole position in 13 races today, but behind that headline is an interesting story which gives McLaren some encouragement for the Grand Prix, particularly if it is wet, as it has been every day this weekend. I spoke with Mark Webber after the qualifying session and he seemed to be more impressed with Lewis Hamilton’s improvement of four tenths of a second at the end of the session when the track was wet, than he was with his own pole position. Asking engineers from other teams they share that sense of wonder at Hamilton’s final More…

Mark Webber took pole position for Sunday’s Belgian Grand Prix, ahead of Lewis Hamilton and Robert Kubica on a day when changeable conditions and sudden rain showers made it very hard to predict when the track would be at its fastest. It was Webber’s fifth pole position of the season and the 12th from 13 races for Red Bull. “We knew the first lap would be important. The weather has been so on and off. I was happy with the lap and it was enough for pole,” said Webber. “It was tense times when the track is like that. It More…

After three days of voting by readers of this site and over 230 comments, the clear winner of the moment of the year so far is the collision between Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber in Istanbul. The second most popular moment was Lewis Hamilton taking pole position in Montreal, the only time in 12 races this season that Red Bull were not on pole. Mark Webber’s win at Silverstone, after being relegated to the old specification front wing was the third favourite moment followed by the breathtaking pass by Rubens Barrichello on Michael Schumacher and the McLaren battle for the More…

F1 drivers are pretty selfish individuals more likely to stamp on the fingers of another driver climbing the ladder, than help them. So when I read a story about how Mark Webber helped out fellow Australian driver Will Power, it struck a chord. The trigger for the story is that while Webber leads the F1 drivers’ championship Power is now emulating him and is on top of the Indycar standings in the US with four wins, driving for the Penske team. It turns out that Power owes his career to Webber, who kicked in much of the €500,000 he needed More…

Mark Webber put in a charging drive today to get control of the Hungarian Grand Prix after his team mate Sebastian Vettel was given a penalty and put himself back in the lead of the championship battle. It was Red Bull’s 100th Grand Prix start and its 12th victory and it gave them the lead in the constructors’ championship. It was Webber’s fourth win of the season and the sixth win of his career and it was all built on an astonishing middle stint on soft tyres after a sudden safety car for debris on the track. With Lewis Hamilton More…

After calming words from Red Bull team principal Christian Horner to attempt to end the row over preferential treatment between drivers, Red Bull adviser Helmut Marko has weighed in today, saying that Webber needs to remember that he was no-where before Red Bull gave him a competitive car. In an interview with Auto Motor und Sport, Marko says that Webber should not believe that the team favours Vettel, as it is always Vettel’s car which breaks. “If Mark imagines there’s a conspiracy between us and Vettel against him, then he is on the wrong track,” Marko said. “If I was More…

Mark Webber has confronted head on the issue of his “number two” treatment by the Red Bull team in the aftermath of today’s British Grand Prix. On the radio on the slowing down lap he said, “Not bad for a number two driver” and then in the press conference he said that he would not have signed his contract renewal last month if he had thought that the team would act this way. He described his win today as an “appointment with karma”, poetic justice after the events of Saturday. Yesterday, after a component failure, the team found itself able More…

Mark Webber won the British Grand Prix today and afterwards radioed the team to say, “Not bad for a number two driver” – a comment on the anger he still clearly feels about the team switching the front wings yesterday before qualifying. Lewis Hamilton had a very strong afternoon in the McLaren, finishing in second place despite the difficulties the team had this weekend with the blown diffuser package and with general handling problems. Nico Rosberg finished third. It was also a great day for the revamped Silverstone circuit which showed that the changes really have promoted overtaking. There were More…

The F1 paddock is abuzz this evening after Red Bull team principal Christian Horner took the decision to take the new front wing off Mark Webber’s car and give it to Sebastian Vettel for qualifying. It has triggered a new row about favouritism, which first reared its head after the pair collided in Istanbul. The German went on to take pole position today ahead of his team mate by 0.14 seconds. The difference between the two wings is quite clear, as you can see from these two pictures. The older one (pictured above on Webber’s car in the garage tonight) More…

Mark Webber will be Sebastian Vettel’s team mate for 2011 after the Red Bull team confirmed today that it was extending his contract. It will be Webber’s fifth season with the team. It was expected anyway, but it seems that the furore over the collision between the pair last week and the reaction to it may have hastened the confirmation. Webber, 33, is in the form of his career, leading the world championship with four poles and two wins this season. “It was an easy decision to remain with Red Bull Racing,” he said. “We began talking very early this More…

Red Bull has drawn a line under the episode in Istanbul where its two drivers hit each other, but the points remain lost. We calculate that the total points lost by Red Bull this season in the opening seven races adds up to 120. Under a photo with the caption “Sh*t happens” the team said that the two drivers plus Helmut Marko and Christian Horner met at the team’s HQ in Milton Keynes to clear the air. The statement also contained the first words from Vettel about the incident since his brief appearance in front of the microphones in Istanbul. More…

Red Bull has put out a video with Mark Webber talking about Sunday’s Turkish Grand Prix and his collision with Sebastian Vettel. And faced with a torrent of criticism on the team’s website and elsewhere, team boss Christian Horner has issued a statement which rows back on the position on Sunday night and seems to place more of the blame on Vettel. Webber looks rather contrite in the video, but he also seems quite resolute. He talks of his own championship quest and the fact that it is going to be uncomfortable at times with two team mates fighting at More…

Last year after the race at the Nurburgring, I went into the Red Bull motorhome to congratulate Mark Webber on his first Formula 1 victory. There was no sign of Webber, but team principal Christian Horner and Dr Helmut Marko were deep in conversation next to the bar. Both looked pretty serious. Webber had won the race while Vettel had finished second, largely due to being rather tentative in qualifying, where he ended up fourth. I watched him very closely that weekend and spoke to him several times and I felt that he was really feeling the pressure of a More…

Lewis Hamilton won the Turkish Grand Prix, his first victory of the season with Jenson Button second and Mark Webber third. It is McLaren’s second one-two finish of the season. Webber leads the drivers championship, McLaren take over the constructors’ championship lead. But the race will be remembered for the extraordinary incident on lap 40 when the two Red Bull cars drove into each other while fighting for the lead. It is likely to prove a turning point in the championship and certainly in the relationship between the drivers. It will require incredible management skill by Christian Horner to establish More…

Today has seen the bosses of Red Bull and Ferrari give strong hints that they will be keeping the same driver line up for next season. First Ferrari’s Stefano Domenicali said Felipe Massa was likely to be given an extension in an interview with my old sparring partner Martin Brundle on the BBC. “Yes I think so,” he said responding to Martin’s question would Ferrari retain its drivers. When Martin asked if he was “sure” he said “Yes” Massa has had a difficult start to the season and has been outpaced by team mate Fernando Alonso so far. But he More…

I’ve been thinking about Mark Webber’s recent success and it struck me that ‘older driver makes good’ is such a positive storyline for Formula 1. In two successive seasons we have seen the phenomenon of drivers in the later stages of their careers finding success; Jenson Button and Mark Webber. Both have seen their careers revitalized when it looked like the sands of time might be starting to run out for them. What makes it doubly positive is that It hasn’t happened for a while and it goes against the prevailing trend of gilded youth in sport. In the last More…

Today’s Monaco Grand Prix was full of drama but we also saw some amazing performances from several drivers, not just in the race, but over the weekend as a whole. So let’s take a look at the two main contenders: Mark Webber A dominant drive by the veteran Aussie, who is in the form of his life. For the second race in a row he took pole and controlled the race. He had four safety cars to contend with, which cut his lead down to nothing each time. He made an assured start, not giving Vettel or Kubica a chance More…

Mark Webber won the Monaco Grand Prix today ahead of Sebastian Vettel and Robert Kubica. He leads the world championship for the first time in his career. It was Red Bull’s second 1-2 finish of the season and the fourth team 1-2 we have had in six races, which must be some kind of record. If it seemed effortless for Webber, the race was nonetheless full of drama with no less than four safety cars. “It’s the greatest day of my life every F1 victory is special but to win on the streets here and join all the great winners More…

Mark Webber stunned F1 again today with his second pole position in eight days as he dominated qualifying for the Monaco Grand Prix. It is the sixth pole in six races for Red Bull this season. That is championship winning form and after early season reliability issues, they need to make sure they again convert it to a win tomorrow. All predictions, including his own, were that it would be very close. In the end it wasn’t close at all. Webber was 3/10ths of a second ahead of Robert Kubica’s Renault, with Sebastian Vettel in third, 4/10ths behind Webber. But More…

Mark Webber won the Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona today, crushing the opposition in a Red Bull car they had described all weekend as ‘untouchable.” It is his third Grand Prix win and was one of those weekends where no-one could get near him either in qualifying or the race. It was the 10th time in a row this race has been won from pole position and Webber is the fourth different winner in five races this season. But it wasn’t a perfect day for Red Bull as Sebastian Vettel’s race was compromised by losing a place to Lewis Hamilton More…

Mark Webber has hit back at suggestions that he may retire from Formula 1 at the end of this season. The 33 year old Australian arrived in the Melbourne paddock today with stories swirling around him thanks to an intervention from Lewis Hamilton, who suggested that he might retire at the end of the season, ”I don’t know how long he [Webber] plans to stay in F1, but I get the sense that it’s one of the years if he wants to finish on top and perhaps call it a day,” he said. But Webber said, “I’m very motivated, enjoying More…

Today the 11 teams who have got their cars ready for the start of the new season were on track for the first day of the final official test at Barcelona. Mark Webber set the fastest time, but the headline lap times are not really important at this stage, that will come in the later stages of the test when we start to get the low fuel qualifying specials. What was interesting today was that the teams were working hard on the adjustable front wings which have become a crucial device on the long runs with heavy fuel loads. Since More…

Mark Webber’s Japanese Grand Prix looked like a bit of a write-off; he finished last, two laps behind his team mate who won the race in the same car. But it could turn out to have been a very worthwhile afternoon. The Australian crashed on Saturday morning, doing enough damage to his car for it to be scrapped and this meant he had to miss qualifying and start the race from the pit lane. He was back into the pits twice in the first few laps to fix a loose headrest. From then on his race was a test session. More…

The Red Bull team has a lot of work to do if it is to challenge for the win here this weekend, according to Mark Webber. The Aussie who lies second in the world championship, 18.5 points behind Jenson Button, says that the team expected Valencia to suit their car less well than other tracks coming up, like Spa, but nevertheless he is concerned by the difference in lap times with the Brawns in particular, “We’ve got a bit of work to do tonight,” he said. “We are not at our normal level at the moment. Seems to be [that More…

On my way back from the airport on Sunday night my taxi driver was talking about Mosley this and Ecclestone that and I asked him if he was interested in other sports. He was. So then I asked him if he could name the regulatory and commercial bosses of any of those sports. He could not. These larger than life characters have actually taken over the limelight from the drivers this season, which is extraordinary but it looks like that is about to end and the focus for the final eight races will be on who is going to win More…

Mark Webber drove a nerveless final lap in qualifying today to take the first pole of his 128 race career. This was one of the most sensational qualifying sessions in recent memory, with intermittent rain falling throughout the second and third sessions, making tyre choice and timing of runs absolutely critical. The most extreme part of the session was qualifying 2, where there was a window of about three minutes to be on the slick tyre as the track began to dry out, before it started to rain again. Webber, Rubens Barrichello and Sebastian Vettel all got through safely but More…

Mark Webber has come out with some perky quotes today about the second half of the season and his chances of having a run at championship leader Jenson Button. Mark is 28.5 points behind Button (wish we could get rid of the half point thing, but without another rained off race we won’t be able to) and only 3.5 points behind his team mate Sebastian Vettel with a maximum of 90 points still available from the nine remaining races. Webber needs to score an average of just over three points per race more than Button to beat him to the More…