Mark Webber
Mark Webber
19.07.1980 (44 years) (Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA)
Mark Alan Webber (born 27 August 1976) is an Australian former professional racing driver, who last competed in the FIA World Endurance Championship as a Porsche works driver in LMP1, in which he won the championship in 2015. After some racing success in Australia driving Formula Ford and Formula Holden, Webber moved to the United Kingdom in 1995 to further his motorsport career. Webber began a partnership with fellow Australian Paul Stoddart, at that time owner of the European Racing Formula 3000 team, which eventually took them both into Formula One when Stoddart bought the Minardi team. He also beat future F1 World Champion Fernando Alonso, then 19, in the 2000 International Formula 3000 season. Webber made his Formula One debut in 2002, scoring Minardi's first points in three years at his and Stoddart's home race. After his first season, Jaguar took him on as lead driver. During two years with the generally uncompetitive team, Webber qualified on the front two rows of the grid several times and outperformed his teammates. His first F1 win was with Red Bull at the 2009 German Grand Prix, which followed second places at the 2009 Chinese Grand Prix, 2009 Turkish Grand Prix and 2009 British Grand Prix. By the end of 2009, Webber had scored eight podiums, including another victory in Brazil. His eight podiums in 2009 compares with only two podiums in the first seven years of his career. He added ten more podiums in 2010, including victories in Spain, Monaco, Britain and Hungary. Webber finished the 2010 season in third place having led for a long period, losing out to teammate Sebastian Vettel in the final race of the season. Webber added another race victory in the 2011 Brazilian Grand Prix, as he once again finished third behind champion Vettel and runner-up Jenson Button. Webber partnered Vettel again in the 2012 season, outperforming him in the early season and looked to be a major title contender but fell away with no wins in the second half of the season after two in the Monaco and British Grands Prix. He finished the season in sixth position. Webber was also a long-term director of the Grand Prix Drivers' Association, the Formula One drivers' union. On 27 June 2013, Webber announced he would be retiring from Formula One at the end of the season. He began to race for Porsche in 2014, on a long-term deal, racing LMP1 Sportscars in the FIA World Endurance Championship. Webber is one of six drivers of the Porsche 919 Hybrid, and in November 2015 he became World Endurance Champion in the #17 car, alongside Timo Bernhard and Brendon Hartley. The trio race with the #1 on their car in 2016. After his retirement from F1 Webber joined the BBC F1 team as an occasional pundit and reporter from 2014–2015 and has joined the Channel 4 F1 Team in the UK for their coverage in 2016 as a full-time pundit. On 13 October 2016, Webber announced that he would retire from driving at the end of the 2016 season in order to take up a representative role with Porsche and to focus on media roles with Channel 4's coverage of F1 and WEC.