Photo: Webber on pole - F3 at Brands HatchCould 2010 be the year of the “Aussie
under-dog”? With Sam Stouser almost winning the French Open, Will Power
winning the early Indycar races and qualifying on the front row of the
Indianapolis 500 as well as Ryan Briscoe winning the Texas 550K.
The pinnacle so far this year has been
Mark Webber winning two Formula 1 Grand Prix’s and could have possibly
taken three in a row if he hadn’t crashed with his team mate last week
in Turkey!
Back in 1960 Jack Brabham won the
F.1 Championship in his little Cooper Climax (he also won it in 1959
& 1966) and Alan Jones won the F.1 title in 1980 driving a Williams
FW07 with wins at France, Britain, Canada and USGP East (Watkins Glen).
Jones also won four races the
previous year; all in the last part of the season but he only finished
third in the Championship to Jody Scheckter and the great Gilles
Villeneuve. So could 2010 be Webbers Year?
Mark Webber started racing Formula
Ford and F4000 in Australia before going to the U.K. in 1996 where he
won the Formula Ford Festival.
The following year he drove in
British F3 for Alan Docking Racing and won the Brands Hatch race from
pole. It was his only race win of the year in that series, but a
dominant win over a class field and I was there to see it.
We were running Simon Wills with
Glen Waters Intersport Racing when Jonny Kane beat Nicolas Minassian,
Peter Dumbreck and Webber for the 1997 F.3 title.
Webber then joined the Mercedes Benz team to contest the 1998 FIA GT Championship and was runner-up with five wins.
In 1999 he tested an Arrows F1
car but he had two huge crashes in the Mercedes CLK sportscar and they
withdrew from the series. That led to a F3000 drive with European Racing
where he was third in the 2000 series and second to Justin Wilson in
2001 with three wins.
Webber
got his first F1 drive in 2002 with Minardi and was 5th in his first
race, the Australian GP in Melbourne. This was his only result for
the year and he finished 16th in the drivers championship.
He then went to Jaguar F1 for the
next two years finishing in the top 10 in 2003 but then slipped back
down to 13th overall in 2004.
He moved over to Williams for
2005-06 and was 10th and 14th before moving back to his old team which
now was called Red Bull Racing (RBR).
Two years of driving with David
Coulthard at RBR saw him 12th and 11th then last year he finally cracked
it, winning Grand Prix’s at Germany and Brazil to be fourth overall
behind Button, Vettel (his new RBR team mate) and Barrichello.
So after 145 starts over the past
nine years, Webber has four wins and five pole positions in F1.
Can the 33 year old Aussie win this years championship over his German team mate Vettel and the McLarens of Hamilton and Button? Just like Brabham did in 1960 and Jones in 1980….
