Aussie Grit (11 page)

I felt some trepidation about racing at night, not least of all because of the speed differential between the various classes of cars that race at Le Mans. It’s a sobering thought that when you come to the end of a straight in your car you
will still be pedal to the metal up around 300-plus when you reach the braking-board 200 metres from a first-gear chicane – by which time the GT2 guys have been on the brakes for about 150 metres already, so there is a difference of about 150 kilometres per hour between you.

Still, I was trying not to set too much store by this first appearance at Le Mans. For a start, I understood that however much testing and preparation you had done, in the pressure-cooker of that race a 50-cent washer could bring you undone. More than that, though, whether we won by 10 laps or blew up on the first one, I felt it didn’t carry that much weight where my future was concerned. Just as well: I never got to turn a wheel in anger! Our lead man Bernd started the race but had to call it quits after just 75 minutes of the 24 hours when a steering-pump problem led to engine failure. Neither Klaus nor I got into the car. Becoming a Le Mans driver would have to wait another year.

Meanwhile there was a GT championship to be won. Bernd and I set about doing that in the best way possible: we won the third round at Hockenheim in Germany on the last weekend of June 1998. It was the maiden victory for the CLK-LM, albeit one race later than we had all hoped, and Bernd’s signature was all over it: pole position, a double stint in the cockpit at the start, a 40-second lead when he handed over to me and an eventual 72-second margin of victory over the Ludwig/Zonta Mercedes.

The next race couldn’t have been more of a contrast. We went to Dijon, in north-eastern France, and once again we were comfortably in control until traffic forced me offline and I picked up a piece of debris between the rear wishbone and the inside of my wheel rim. The friction split the rim
and the tyre deflated, which pitched me into a spin and I had to crawl back to pit lane for repairs. With no points for us and with Klaus winning the race in the other Mercedes, our title hopes had taken a knock.

But you have to roll with the punches and come out fighting again, which is exactly what we did in round five at the Hungaroring just outside Budapest only a week later. Bernd and I led from start to finish from the car’s fourth successive pole; we were a point behind our teammates as the GT championship prepared to head east.

A few days in Oz catching up with family and friends (my sister Leanne was about to give birth to her first child) did me the world of good. Immediately after that Bernd and I caught up with Klaus and Ricardo and regained the lead in the GT series. Not only that, but for me it was the most remarkable victory I had tasted so far. It came at one of my favourite circuits, Suzuka in Japan, and it was doubly satisfying because it was a 1000-kilometre test of endurance in high temperatures and even higher humidity – one of the worst combinations a driver can face. Sure enough, I started dehydrating, but I got over it quickly enough to take over the car for the final hour and bring it home again.

When we racked up victory number five in the next race back in the UK things were looking rosy for the #1 Mercedes. We were seven points in the clear with three rounds to go, and another 1–2 result meant Mercedes had retained the manufacturers’ title. Round eight in the third week of September took me back to the scene of the crime: the A1-Ring in Austria where just over a year earlier I went through that first spine-tingling test for Mercedes. This time I had a shorter day’s work ahead of me – a three-hour
race – but there was plenty at stake again. Despite Bernd’s best efforts in his final stint we were beaten by over half a minute. Our lead was down to three points; maybe it was just as well we had a month’s break in the schedule before heading across the pond for the final two rounds in the USA.

Unfortunately I kept my least impressive performance of the year for the first of those two American races, at Homestead in Florida on 18 October. Once again there was lingering evidence of my inexperience: while we had all the technical back-up we could hope for, race-day specifics like wellness and hydration were left to the drivers’ own devices and I wasn’t getting my physical preparation quite right. I was also caught out by Klaus Ludwig’s craftiness as I chased him late in the race – he forced me into a mistake and I went off. Now we were four points adrift, with one race left on the other side of the country at Laguna Seca. When we got to the business end of the race Zonta had 18 seconds on me. I tried very hard to catch him, but I went off on a large patch of oil someone had kindly deposited – and Ricardo had the same problem next time round. I fired in a string of fastest laps but just ran out of time and had to back off and keep an eye on the fuel gauge.

So the end result was second place in the FIA GT Championship by a margin of eight points. My disappointment was tempered by happiness for Klaus, since that was his last year in racing, but I also felt it had been a little unfair on Bernd. His partner came from Formula Ford and F3, whereas Ricardo arrived as the new F3000 champion to partner Klaus and was already getting test drives in Formula 1. I could go toe-to-toe with them most times but
sometimes I struggled, partly because it was Bernd’s car, basically, and he had it set up as he wanted it, and partly through sheer lack of experience.

I didn’t realise until a few years later how lucky I had been to see how Mercedes went about their racing: the discipline in every area was exemplary. In terms of car preparation it was a super team. On the back of that success Zonta headed off to F1 with the BAR (British American Racing) team; meanwhile I was gearing up for a second season of sports-car racing.

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The Mercedes arrangement had changed things dramatically on the professional front, and it almost changed my personal life at the same time. If I really wanted to go somewhere as a racing driver, 1998 also taught me that you have to be emotionally sound as well as physically together. There was a period in the middle of that year when I was an emotional mess.

My parents came over to the UK in the English summer of 1997. While they were thrilled about how things were developing for me in racing, they’d been less thrilled by the romantic relationship that was developing between Annie and me. I had suspected that Dad had sensed our growing feelings as he had been spending quite a bit of time with us in the UK but he hadn’t raised any warning flags with me. I think it’s fair to say that both he and I buried our heads in the sand as we didn’t want to upset Mum by telling her the truth about my relationship with Ann. It was only when Mum came over in 1997 that it had to be confronted.

I felt totally torn between the new life I was carving out for myself in the UK and wanting to keep my parents happy and, more importantly, respect their feelings. Annie could sense the pressure I was under and didn’t want to add to it: she was understanding to a point but she was disappointed that she was being made to feel uncomfortable in her own home, all because the Webbers hadn’t communicated with each other very well. The irony was that by wanting to protect Mum in the first place and not telling her, Dad and I had ultimately made things worse. Disey is quite a traditional mum and she was terribly distraught and upset, mainly because of the age difference between me and Annie, and she was concerned that this would mean I wouldn’t have a family of my own.

But even Annie and I didn’t know ourselves where our relationship would play out at that stage. We had no expectations, we had been surprised ourselves how strongly our feelings had developed, but there were people telling us it wasn’t right, it couldn’t work. Admittedly, the pressure got to me and we agreed to put the personal side of our relationship on hold although we continued to share a house together. When I went back to Australia for a break, I started a relationship with a girl I’d known from high school. Mum and Dad were very supportive of this blossoming new romance and in this version of the movie Webber marries the hometown girl, they start a family and everyone lives happily ever after.

Annie knew that I had only scratched the surface of my racing career but she wasn’t prepared to hang around and watch young love undermine all we’d worked so hard for. No doubt the 1998 Australian Grand Prix only reinforced the way Annie felt, because my new girlfriend and I made a
point of announcing our presence in a less than inconspicuous fashion, even to the extent of waltzing into the Yellow Pages suite and laying down some new ground rules, such as the number of autographs I’d sign and meet-and-greets I was willing to do! Of course, this did not go down well with Bob Copp and his colleagues, who were concerned that their vision for me, and their investment, was about to be derailed.

Annie was bitterly disappointed at my behaviour. Her plan to take me to the highest level of motor sport was starting to go horribly wrong, so she left Australia earlier than planned and headed back to Europe. My family arranged for Alan Docking to collect my belongings from the house we had been sharing and the one and only car Annie and I had at that stage. That left Luke and her stuck in Aylesbury without any form of transport; she later told me that she rented a car whenever she needed to travel for work. Campese Management told her that they had been instructed by the Webber family to terminate her role as my manager and that Campese Management would be taking over all aspects of my career, including the negotiation of my driving contracts.

Meanwhile, I was off to Germany again, which was bloody tough as it was now going to be my base in Europe. I was in Stuttgart on my own staying in a hotel, although sometimes I’d stay at Bernd’s place, where I learned another little quirk of European life: the continental breakfast! He and I would come back from a 10-kilometre run, I’d be absolutely ravenous – and he would have a little bit of cheese and ham. I ended up virtually scavenging for food, I was so hungry.

One thing I did enjoy was some of the development work Mercedes asked me to do on the road-going versions of the cars we were racing: it got me onto the autobahn, well north of 320 kilometres per hour, on more than one occasion. There would be an engineer sitting beside me punching the numbers in and saying, ‘Schneller, Schneller!’ – ‘Faster! Faster!’ – when I was already going fast enough for the wipers to peel off the windscreen and bend back along the side of the car like boomerangs. It was by far the quickest I had ever been in a road car.

By late April, as my first race with Mercedes was fast approaching, I was an emotional wreck. I had the pressure of wanting to do well in my new role; I had my family encouraging me to take a different path in my personal life; and there were plans in place for my girlfriend to come to Europe to attend my first few races.

I knew that what was going on in my private life was going to affect my driving, and I knew the new regime – a new girlfriend, a new management company – wasn’t going to work. My family and I were dreaming if we thought I could survive and succeed in Germany on my own. I knew the guys at the Mercedes team but I couldn’t exactly sit down and talk to them about my personal life – the last thing they wanted was a bit of
Dallas
in the middle of their sports car season.

While I knew Annie provided the support and guidance I needed in my racing career, I was missing her in so many other ways too. We were such a dynamic force in every sense; we could make things happen when we were together. We were teammates, soul mates, call it what you want. Maybe I had been blind to it but we had been on a
life journey together and it was going places. I realised I’d screwed things up with her and there was only one way to fix them again: call her. So I did – several times, in fact, but she was quietly getting on with her life in motor racing and at first the calls went unanswered because she was away racing.

When she eventually answered, the only thing I could say was, ‘I want to come home.’

So after six months Annie and I resumed our relationship, both personally and professionally. I moved back in with her and Luke in Aylesbury and settled down to the serious job of being a professional racing driver, but now in a stable home environment that I was comfortable with.

My dad never really had a problem with my relationship with Annie. Mum knows now that there have been more positives than negatives to it. She and Annie were slow to bond but I can honestly say that their relationship has never been stronger than it is now. They’re never going to have the stereotypical mother-in-law/daughter-in-law relationship, which I’m happy about as I’ve seen plenty of major fallouts and disruptions caused by feuding mothers and daughters-in-law! Nowadays they have a good friendship and there’s a lot of mutual respect between them.

As to Mum’s concern about our age difference, that has never been a factor for us. When we began to be more open about being together, perhaps the top end of the age gap shocked a few people. In those days people were less accepting of a big age difference between partners, especially when it’s our way round. It’s not such a big deal nowadays and it makes us laugh when so-called celebrities reveal they’re dating an older woman or younger man! One of the most
amusing things is when we’re checking in to hotels and we get asked if we require separate rooms, or if Dad’s with us, they try checking him and Annie in together! Even now it still causes the odd raised eyebrow!

As to Ann’s family’s reaction, we had stayed with her mother when we first moved to the UK in early 1996 and Bettine was always very supportive of my career. She was wise enough to see the relationship developing between us but never felt it was her place to say anything either way. But when it had become blatantly obvious, she embraced it. Sadly Bettine died in March 2015 at 92, but she was sharp as a tack until the end.

In career terms, perhaps the most crucial lesson I learned in 1998 was about discipline. It’s so easy for young athletes to be dazzled by the trappings of success, whether you measure those in material possessions or in the so-called glamorous lifestyle that people associate with sporting achievement.