Aussie Grit (25 page)

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Not long after the start of my first season with RBR, I had to manage a bit of a family upset. When Ann and I moved to our present home at the end of 2004, we bought one another housewarming presents – two 12-week old puppies! Ann’s was a Weimaraner she named Shadow and mine a Rhodesian ridgeback which I called Milo after the iconic Aussie chocolate and malt drink! I had been around dogs all my life, but they had been essentially working dogs and I never formed a close attachment to them. Milo and Shadow, in stark contrast, quickly became cosseted and fully signed-up members of the Webber household.

We had come home from the early season ‘fly-away’ races and noticed that Milo was limping quite badly. Initially we thought it was just a harmless strain, but after numerous tests and X-rays he was diagnosed with cancer in one of his
front legs. He was only two and a half years old. Annie and I were at Magny-Cours for the French Grand Prix when the vet phoned to tell us the news. That night we were both a mess and barely slept. When the vet suggested that Milo’s life could be saved if we had the affected leg amputated, we didn’t hesitate. The week between the French and British Grands Prix became a blur, travelling between home, the vet and the animal hospital where Milo was to have the operation. It went well and he recovered to become the fastest three-legged dog in Buckinghamshire. However, we were warned by the vet there was a slim chance the cancer could return as a secondary tumour in the lungs and that the telltale sign would be a cough, so that was always on our radar.

Meanwhile, Silverstone brought some good news with the announcement that DC and I would team up again for Red Bull in 2008, but we weren’t able to build on our Indianapolis points for another three races, so it took us until the 10th round of the season to achieve a really significant result.

It came at a place that was becoming quite important in my F1 résumé, the Nürburgring, where I had finished sixth and seventh in my two Jaguar seasons. It was the scene of the 2007 European Grand Prix, where I claimed the second podium of my career and my first for Red Bull Racing. I was helped by the fact that the two BMWs hit each other on the opening lap in the rain. As always seemed to be the case up there in the Eifel Mountains it was wet or drizzly a lot of the weekend and it was all about being on the right tyres at the right time. I put in a long second stint on the dry-weather version and slotted in behind Fernando Alonso’s McLaren and Felipe Massa’s Ferrari, which had a massive
battle for the win. I wasn’t all that unhappy to see Kimi’s Ferrari retire, either, as that gave me a reasonably clear run home. In terms of pure results, that was the highlight of my debut year with Red Bull, but I should say in passing that the very next race, in Hungary, was one of my best. It was a two-stopper, an epic fight with Heikki Kovalainen’s Renault lap after lap, on the limit all day – to finish ninth. A long day at the office for no reward.

Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium is another of the greatest tracks in F1 history. Even though it’s now only half of its original 14.8-kilometre length, it still rises, swoops and swerves through the beautiful forested landscape of the Ardennes, close to where the Battle of the Bulge took place in the Second World War. Spa has always been a favourite of mine, and in 2007 I reached the milestone of my 100th Grand Prix there.

However, the world was less focused on me than on McLaren: the news had just broken of their staggering $100 million fine over the spying case involving Ferrari ‘secrets’. Not only that, but my Scottish teammate was very low after the death, in a helicopter accident, of his compatriot, friend and rallying superstar Colin McRae on the Saturday of the Spa weekend.

Where we traditionally stayed for Spa was a small family-run hotel called Le Roannay in Francorchamps. It’s a quirky place but everyone in F1 would stay there, especially in the days when there wasn’t much in the way of decent accommodation available so close to the track. It’s convenient, it has its own helipad and right up until my final year in F1 we stayed there and flew in and out by chopper to Liege. That evening, David and Karen Richards (David ran Prodrive,
the team with whom Colin enjoyed much of his WRC success) had flown in for the weekend only to be greeted by the terrible news. I heard it over the phone from a distraught Bernie Shrosbree, who had worked closely with Colin when he drove for Ford and was one of the first on the scene when he suffered his huge rallying crash in Corsica. So was my physio Roger Cleary, whom Bernie had recommended to me and who joined Team Webber in mid-2006. David and Karen were so distraught that they left first thing in the morning; unbelievably they had a nasty scare themselves when they had to crash-land their own helicopter in a field in Essex on the way home.

It was hardly any consolation, but back on track I put a good move on Heikki Kovalainen on the uphill run to Les Combes on the third lap and DC did a good job as my tail-gunner against Robert Kubica, so seventh place was mine. It was pleasing to beat the other Renault team but the feeling persisted that we simply weren’t quick enough, which had been underlined by mediocre showings in Turkey and Italy. The Spa result was the last real on-track highlight of my first season as a Red Bull Racing driver.

If you want a low-light, look no further than the very next race, at Fuji in Japan. It was a very tough weekend for a number of reasons. One of those was a dose of food poisoning. I’m a great fan of seafood, which we had enjoyed for dinner the previous evening, but by three the next morning I was in big trouble. I was dehydrated and weakened by the time we went to the grid. I couldn’t keep anything down and I rang Roger to ask him to come and offer any assistance he could. We took the decision not to tell anyone except Christian, which we did at the track.
I was so drained, and it was only shortly before I got in the car that I tried some soup to see if I could keep that down. I couldn’t – and the fans nearby must have been shocked by what they saw as I emptied my guts on the grass. I know the Renault mechanics were! The stop–start jolts behind the safety car in the race didn’t help either, and I can tell you on good authority that being sick in a racing helmet is not an experience to be repeated.

The other reason why that Fuji weekend was not a brilliant success was Sebastian Vettel. By this time the new German Wunderkind had switched from BMW Sauber to drive for the rest of the season with our sister team, Toro Rosso. But what he did to me in Japan wasn’t very brotherly.

The track itself was treacherous because of heavy rain. There were rivers across the circuit everywhere. The race started behind the safety car and remained that way for the first 19 of the scheduled 67 laps. Once we were allowed to race, I led laps 32–36; shortly after that the safety car was out again because Fernando aquaplaned off on lap 42, hitting a barrier at Turn 6; that left me in second place behind race leader Lewis Hamilton’s McLaren with Vettel next in line behind me. We were looking at a podium or even a win, which of course would have been Red Bull’s first and a genuine milestone for the team.

I thought if I put pressure on Lewis he might start thinking about the big picture, championship-wise. He was being a bit of a smart-arse behind the safety car, which still had its lights on. The field was yo-yoing back and forward behind him as he worked his car’s tyres and brakes. Apparently he was on the horn to his pit wall, asking them to tell Red Bull Racing to instruct me to back off. At one point he veered
over to the side, and I drew alongside him to see what he was up to. Vettel had already been a bit wild behind me during the first safety car period, but that hadn’t prepared me for what happened next. BANG! It seems he had been watching Lewis’s car – and forgotten about mine, so fairly predictably he ran right up the back of me and we were both out on the spot.

After the race I had to go to the medical centre because I was so dehydrated, and deflated because a great opportunity had gone begging. The boys back in the garage took a long time to get over that. I did nothing wrong, and yet I got no reward. I heard later that Sebastian was in tears. I think he was quite frightened to see me the first time after it happened! He got his apology out pretty quickly, and I didn’t hesitate when I was asked for my view of proceedings.

‘It’s kids, isn’t it?’ I replied. ‘They haven’t got enough experience. They do a good job and then they f#*k it all up. A little bit of day-dreaming cost both teams a lot of points.’

It wasn’t the last time Sebastian would fall foul of safety cars … and for our team it was nothing short of a disaster.

I was fifth on the grid for the final race in Brazil but I was out after just 14 laps with another transmission failure. The five points we needed to beat Williams didn’t materialise, which was a disappointing way to end that little battle, one I would have enjoyed winning. But at least we found some late-season pace for the people at the factory to latch on to for the winter ahead.

I now had 103 races under my belt and another podium to my record, finishing 12th overall, two places higher than the previous year. But neither I nor Red Bull Racing had set the world on fire. We were still a long way from where we wanted to be.

A
T THE START OF
2008,
THERE WAS MORE THAN JUST
F
1
ON
my mind when what Ann and I were fearing came true. While I was away testing at Jerez in southern Spain, Ann detected our dog Milo had developed a chesty cough and sure enough, a visit to the vet and an X-ray revealed cancer in one of his lungs. I’d never really understood what it was like to form that special bond with an animal. In fact when I was younger I could never understand why my sister Leanne got so upset when she lost one of her pets. I barely paid any attention, never mind giving her any sympathy. Now it was happening to one of my own dogs. Milo and Shadow were a massive part of our home life; they were my mates and my training companions. I would seek them out as soon as I arrived home from a race and take them for a long walk, just the three of us, as I unwound from the stresses and demands of a Grand Prix weekend.

Arriving home from the test and seeing Milo so overjoyed to see me ripped me apart. He didn’t look ill but we knew his condition wasn’t going to get any better. Ann and I agreed we couldn’t put this brave dog through any more trauma and so we made the heart-breaking call to Anne, our vet, and asked if she would come to the house to put him to sleep. I will never forget that day: the sound of Anne’s car on the gravel outside and Milo wagging his tail madly at the thought of a visitor to the house. Totally oblivious to the reason she was there, he was still wagging his tail as she injected the drug. I’m not ashamed to admit I bawled my eyes out as I felt his head going heavy in my hands. His life slipped away and I remember I closed his big brown eyes. It was the worst day of my life. We had him cremated that afternoon and when we returned home, I took myself off for a long run in the dark with some of his ashes in a bag. When I got to certain places he used to enjoy, I stopped to scatter a handful of the ashes. I’m sure if anyone had seen me, they would have wondered what this tearful grown man was doing. I was saying goodbye to a mate.

But the world of F1 stops for nobody and it was only a matter of a few days before the next F1 pre-season test beckoned. I was back on the F1 treadmill, which was probably as good a way as any to manage the emotions I was feeling at that time.

Going into my second season with Red Bull, the top brass at the team were making predictions about finishing fourth in the Constructors’ Championship, which would be one better than we had managed in 2007. At that early stage in the team’s history Christian was very big on continuity, and that was one thing we did have, not least in the cockpit,
where DC and I would be teaming up once more. Pre-season testing suggested the removal of some of the ‘driver toys’ like traction control might make life challenging for us all, especially on wet tracks. The RB4 had a new gearbox to counter the unreliability of the previous year’s, and its weight bias was shifted towards the front. If we wanted to finish fourth overall it was logical to think we were targeting top-eight race finishes; as I tried to point out in an early BBC column, it was hard for people outside the sport to understand that coming sixth or seventh would be a bloody good result as far as we were concerned. It would be like winning the B-class race behind the front-runners, which once again were tipped to be Ferrari, McLaren and BMW.

We were a long way adrift of that ambition in Australia, which again staged the opening race of the season. I qualified a lowly 15th because a brake disc failed on my first run in Q2. It was a shame, because I had run in the top six in all three free practice sessions. I observed that we were lucky we didn’t build aeroplanes, or the consequences of our failures might be much more severe, and I was firmly hauled over the coals for saying so.

After a goodish start to the race itself I became caught up in a bit of a Japanese sandwich: the Super Aguri of Anthony Davidson and Kazuki Nakajima in his Williams. My car broke a track rod despite the lightest of touches and I was ready for an early shower.

Things got worse. In free practice in Malaysia David suffered a bizarre suspension failure when the adhesives on a steering arm failed and the suspension simply fell apart when he hit a kerb. Meanwhile I suffered an engine failure on my car and the FIA actually asked for a report
on Red Bull Racing’s safety, which was not an encouraging start to the year’s racing.

Luck seemed to turn our way slightly when I inherited sixth on the grid after the two McLarens were demoted for misdemeanours in qualifying, but I had to work hard to get round a fuel pump problem in the race that cost me as much as 15 seconds on my way to the first points of the season in seventh place.

I spent most of the Bahrain race absolutely on the limit in pursuit of another of those seventh places, then had to fight back from a difficult day and a half with a throttle actuator in Spain to qualify seventh and race to fifth, my personal best since the Nürburgring the previous year. If the car had been letting me down here and there, the tables were turned in Turkey: it was the driver who made a mistake in Friday practice on the Astroturf at Turn 6, which was still wet from an earlier shower. I dropped a wheel and ran out of talent, as we say. It was the first time I’d bent the car for quite a while. My race wasn’t one of the most exciting I’ve been involved in and another seventh place was duly racked up.