In qualifying for that Monaco race, trying to put in the big lap, I put the car in the barriers; in the race I was lying fourth when dehydration caught me out and I lost it at the left-hander after the chicane. My physical condition had let me down, and as a consequence my concentration had wavered – and that’s a recipe for disaster in Monaco, which is so physically and mentally demanding. But I made a vow to myself that Monaco would never catch me out again. Little did I know how big a place it was going to occupy in my career.
If Monaco was tough, so was the next round at Magny-Cours in France on the first weekend of June, for different reasons. In the strange world of motor racing you can finish well down the field but know in your own heart that you have performed as well as you possibly could. That’s what happened in France. I suffered a right rear puncture when I ran over some debris early in the race, re-joined dead last after a tyre change and fought back to finish sixteenth. Ann still swears it was one of the best performances of my career.
Hockenheim in Germany brought my final visit to the podium for that 2000 season, which I finished in third place behind Bruno Junqueira and Nicolas Minassian. At the start of the season I would have been happy with an overall finish in the top six, so there was real satisfaction in breaking into the top three.
*
Racing in F3000 was important, but my main objective through 2000 had really been to focus on F1, keeping myself in the frame however I could, and that included doing some further testing. Not for the first time, things turned pear-shaped. I was scheduled to have a major test in the first week of July at Silverstone with Arrows, in the latest car on the full Grand Prix circuit with a proper allocation of tyres to work with. It would have been my first serious Formula 1 test, a day to get into it and feel the car properly. We’d organised for some of the people who were helping me that year to come along and watch.
But about 10 days out from the test Tom Walkinshaw threw a spanner in the works with a contract which he wanted me to sign for the following year – before I got in his car. Stoddy went ballistic. In the middle of that year, the July test was a big opportunity to try out the pukkah race car against some of the other drivers there; it was going to be a pretty big day for me, to say the least, and Paul was fighting my corner.
The proposed contract would have bound me to Tom. Finding myself in a very weak position, it would have been incredibly easy to buckle – you’ve got your name on the side of the car, they’ve done everything to put you in that situation and you’re absolutely busting to do it – but I said ‘No’. Things got pretty juicy between Tom and Stoddy for a while, and that was the end of that test.
Just a few hours later we strolled down to the Benetton garage and renewed contact with Gordon Message, whom I had met several years earlier in Adelaide. Gordon was now Sporting Director at Benetton and said he would work on Flavio Briatore, the Italian who was then in charge of the team. Meantime Ron Walker had come over for a meeting with Bernie Ecclestone, the man who effectively ran Formula 1, during which Ron said how keen he was from an Australian promoter’s point of view to get my backside in a Grand Prix car.
Bernie said, ‘He’s under contract to Tom, isn’t he?’ but of course I had refused to sign at gunpoint. When Ron said ‘No’, Bernie rang Flavio there and then and told him to ‘give the kid a go’. Then Gordon phoned us back and it happened!
‘It’ was a three-day evaluation test from 11–13 September 2000 with Benetton, whose drivers Alex Wurz (funny how Alex kept popping up at my first tests) and Giancarlo Fisichella had just helped the team finish fourth in the World Championship. Admittedly they were light years behind Ferrari and McLaren, but still, this time I would have a genuine chance to show what I could do in a quick F1 car.
The test took place at Estoril in Portugal. Before going down there I had a chat with Ricardo Zonta, my old teammate and sparring partner from our Mercedes sports car days, who had since raced in F1 for BAR and Jordan and knew the track.
Ricardo said to me: ‘It’s bumpy, I hate it, enjoy!’
I studied the circuit like hell on videos because I’d never been there before. I was training really hard to convince myself that I was ready, trying not to leave too many stones unturned. My agenda: keep mistakes to an absolute minimum, fit in as best I could with the team, drive as quickly as I could, draw on all my experience, channel and focus it all into those three days. I just loved the balance of the car. I was lucky because Wurz is a tall bloke so I had a lot of room in the cockpit. I felt comfortable, and that was a massive confidence boost. I drove on the first day of the test and wasn’t a million miles off Ralf Schumacher’s session-leading time in the Williams, but next morning Fisichella got in ‘my’ car and blew my time away.
‘Bloody hell,’ I thought.
The team said, ‘Don’t worry, the track was rubbish yesterday,’ but I was very worried.
When I went out again, within five or 10 laps I realised it was just the track conditions that had made the difference and this time my times were very close to Giancarlo, who had laid down a benchmark of 1:21.710.
On Tuesday afternoon I was down in 1:22 territory, then on Wednesday I was given the same tyres and fuel load as ‘Fisi’. The team told me they would be happy if I got within six-tenths of a second of their F1 regular; in the end I was two-thousandths shy of Giancarlo.
Who’s to say how fired up the Italian was, and how seriously he treated the whole exercise? He came in to do a benchmark time but he’d seen enough of that car, he’d been driving around in it all year only to be told he had to go down to Estoril and do this extra chore. But Benetton’s Technical Director Pat Symonds was there with Gordon, and they gave me a totally fair crack. It was a dream week for me, and it was all done very professionally. By that time Computershare, an Australian-owned share-registry company, was already on board with us in F3000 and its help was important in making that Estoril test possible. The Morris family, who founded Computershare, very quickly became a part of Team Webber; they have attended many Grands Prix around the world and Ann and I remain friends with them to this day.
In the midst of finalising the contract for Estoril, Annie and I were also making what now seems the unfathomable decision to buy our own house. Looking back at it now, it was utter madness: I had nothing guaranteed for the following year, so how the hell were we going to pay for a house? I think our logic was that we had been paying other people’s mortgages for way too long: wouldn’t it be better if we were putting our money towards something we could call our own? Annie found a detached house that needed a bit of TLC in a village called Mursley, close to the outskirts of Milton Keynes, which became home, and the hub for Team Webber, for the next four years. It meant Luke had a bedroom of his own for the first time, a place where he could put pictures of his own sporting heroes up on the wall, and it was somewhere the three of us could call home.
We forged lasting friendships with neighbours Val and Jackie Christensen and other villagers like Tim and Debbie Parker. While Ann and I had kept our relationship private in our professional lives we were openly living together and ensconced in a village community. There were never any questions asked and we were readily accepted for who we were. It was as close to a normal lifestyle as we had enjoyed up until then, and more and more people were beginning to share in our journey. It was a happy and exciting part of our lives as our dream started to come true.
*
The conversation was brief and to the point. ‘Look, Webber, I fucking talking now. You want the deal or no?’
‘Oh, yeah …’
The short reply came from the Queanbeyan end of a telephone line connecting me to Europe and the phenomenon called ‘Flav’: Flavio Briatore, one of the most colourful, controversial and successful men to have functioned in the F1 paddocks of the world in the last quarter of a century. The deal in question was my contract to be Benetton’s F1 test and reserve driver in 2001.
It was a mismatch in boxing terms: a 24-year-old bantamweight tryi
ng to break into the big time against a 50-year-old Italian entrepreneur already established as one of the heavyweights of the game. He’s certainly got a presence, especially for a youngster trying hard not to let himself be overawed by anyone, and you have to concentrate very hard to understand him, especially on the telephone. He talks very fast and when it comes round to the numbers he talks even faster, so dates, terms and conditions are always very quick – but never ask him to repeat them because he’ll kill you!
For a man who started professional life as an insurance agent, Flavio Briatore has come a very long way. His connection with F1 came about with his meeting with Luciano Benetton, head of the clothing empire which was then still in its infancy. It was Flavio who went to the USA and got Benetton’s business up and running there in the mid-eighties. By then Benetton had acquired the Toleman F1 team, and in Mexico in 1986 Gerhard Berger secured the first Grand Prix victory for the most colourful team on the grid. The first F1 race Flavio attended was the Australian Grand Prix in Adelaide in 1988; in 1989 he was named Commercial Director of the Benetton F1 team. An early significant move of Flavio’s was to bring Tom Walkinshaw into the team’s management structure.
Flavio’s greatest gift when he came into F1 was the ability to spot emerging talent. He realised immediately the potential that Michael Schumacher had and signed him for Benetton after just one race with Jordan. It was also Flavio who pushed through the strategic alliance between Benetton and Renault that led to enormous success with world titles in 1994 and 1995. He set up his own management company in 1993, bought and sold F1 teams like Ligier (which became Prost GP) and Minardi, lived the billionaire lifestyle after which his modern business is named and later became involved in one of the biggest scandals in recent Grand Prix history in Singapore in 2008.
My first personal contact with Flav was when I did that Estoril test, after which I went to see him with our lawyer, Simon Taylor. To start with we were negotiating a test driver contract with some options in the future, obviously totally in their favour. Simon was asking some other questions and I was thinking, ‘Don’t ask anything that’s going to piss him off, for Christ’s sake!’
There were some points that did need to be addressed, but we left very happy because I was going to be paid to be a test and reserve driver. I remember Simon saying, ‘I think they’ve got a soft spot for you and they really do want you.’ The other thing both Simon and I remember is that Flavio did two very disconcerting things while we were sitting with him: one was to massage his belly most of the time, the other was to take constant calls from Naomi Campbell.
I was back in Australia while we were trying to close the contract and Simon said, ‘Look, just ring him up and ask him about those two points and see how you go.’
I rang Flavio’s PA and she said he would ring me back. He always does.
When he came back on the line and I said, ‘Oh Flavio, just two points …’, he uttered those immortal words: ‘Look Webber, I fucking talking now! You want the deal or no?’
Mum’s asking me, ‘How d’you go, mate?’ and while I’m figuring out how to explain Flavio to Disey, Dad’s chipping in: ‘What do you think’s going to happen, mate, do you think you’re going to lose it?’
None of us slept a wink that night, thinking, ‘Oh bloody hell, what have we done now?’ So we got back to Simon and said, ‘Quick, get it all done!’ The deal was signed the following morning.
I couldn’t believe I had landed a full-on test and reserve driver deal, although the only part of it I wasn’t particularly keen on was that Flavio wanted me to do another season in F3000. I thought mixing the two together was going to be quite difficult, but he said I had to keep racing, because I had to stay sharp. I wanted to focus on the testing, but he was right. I needed the racing edge.
So I was in a good place early in 2001. It got better in May when I signed with Flavio again, this time to be my manager. It was a huge call on my career. I never imagined anything like that happening, but he was prepared to back me. I had done enough on the track to show that there might be something in it for him because he is a businessman, but what also helped me was that he had a couple of other drivers like Antônio Pizzonia and Giorgio Pantano, who had very good records in the junior categories. They were testing for Benetton at the time; an absolute piece of luck for me was that the team (and, I suspect, Flavio in particular) called for some driver fitness tests. I was committed to fitness by that stage and totally confident I had reached the right levels. Flavio was big on that side of driver preparation after his time with Michael at Benetton, so they really did put their drivers through the mill at the Human Performance Centre at Benetton HQ, a phenomenal facility which was ahead of its time.
When I went down there and met an Englishman called Bernie Shrosbree they certainly put me through the wringer, and my fitness went to a new level again. Bernie’s an ex-SBS marine. He’s also a good judge of character: it’s not about what scores you pull on the rowing machine or the bike, Bernie is much more interested in what’s between the ears and the fire within. Bernie’s dealt with the biggest egos in the world.
‘Purely looking for the character of the individual and, most importantly, the commitment on the physical and mental side,’ is how he explains his approach.
Already at that stage Flavio was aware of a simple fact about me that might work against me in F1: my physical size, especially my height, and the weight that came with it.
‘Webber,’ Flavio had said to Bernie, ‘maybe a bit big, a bit old?’
To move to the next level as a driver I needed someone who really knew the ins and outs of how F1 works. Paul Stoddart had invested £1.1 million in my career through a combination of F3000, the two-seater work and the planned F1 testing – the most expensive component and the one that never actually happened. Paul had converted the total value of that package into a loan. The medium-term arrangement was originally that Paul would take a 20 per cent commission when I started to earn money from my racing; either that or we would pay it back in two lump sums as and when we found ourselves in a position to do so. But it really wasn’t Stoddy’s job to go out and get me to the next level.
I didn’t really have anyone looking out for me, nosing around on my behalf with my interests at heart. Stoddy was being more than fair, but he also had more than enough on his plate – he wasn’t going to make the time to go and pump my tyres up among the other F1 movers and shakers. So at Annie’s suggestion I went to see Flavio about signing up with him. She was prepared to acknowledge that the time had come for her to step back. My reputation was on the up-and-up, and while she was well known in her own right she didn’t have the clout to keep opening doors for me. Nor did she particularly want to move in the F1 paddock.
I said to Stoddy, ‘I need to go to the next level: you could potentially take a cut of me in the future, but what if I can get you that money back and I can put that commission someone else’s way?’
Stoddy’s immediate response was, ‘The best way would be for Flav to buy out your contract with me: let’s see if we can get him to do that.’
We went to Flavio with that idea at Monaco in May 2001 and he agreed. I put pen to paper on a 10-year deal with his management company. He was combining two roles as team manager and driver manager, but all my business dealings from then on were with his right-hand man Bruno Michel. Paul and Flavio came to an arrangement of their own. Stoddy was genuinely happy for me; he knew I had someone who was on the inside and knew the system very well. I was swimming with the sharks now. I’m little, but I’m in there!
*
Given that Flavio was keen for me to keep racing, I ha
d signed to contest the 2001 FIA International F3000 Championship with the reigning champions and perennial front-runners Super Nova, headed up by the highly respected David Sears, and I was looking forward to going there. If you asked him now, Flavio would freely admit that we made a rod for our own backs by combining the F3000 race series with a heavy schedule of F1 testing for Benetton and their new engine supplier, Renault. But once I had convinced myself that I had to do F3000, Super Nova represented my best chance of doing well in the category.
David Sears had guided a string of very talented drivers to success: Ricardo Zonta and Juan Pablo Montoya were just two of the names on his list of previous drivers, while Nicolas Minassian had finished 2000 as F3000 runner-up for the team.
It all began well enough. At the major F3000 test session at Silverstone in early March I ended the first day fastest and over the two days I was second quickest. In the end, though, the season turned into an absolute nightmare. I’ve never crashed so many cars as I did that year, just through a total lack of respect for the F3000 machine. I never bent one bit of carbon on the Renault-powered F1 car but I destroyed the F3000 quite regularly. I had been busy all winter with F1 testing, with an additional stint in Estoril when Fisichella discovered a hairline crack in a bone in his right leg and couldn’t drive.
With hindsight, the season-opening Interlagos F3000 race was the shape of things to come. Qualifying on the fifth row wasn’t a big help, but I fought back well to come through for second place and a handy six points – until the stewards handed me a 25-second penalty for overtaking David Saelens before we crossed the timing line after a safety car period. That was a real kick in the guts for me and for the Super Nova team.
There was only one way to bounce back and we did it by taking pole and the race win at Imola next time out – the famous occasion when I drove with a broken rib sustained under severe G-forces in F1 testing. It was a big breakthrough at that early stage of the season, but F3000 bit back when I crashed in Barcelona qualifying and could do no better than seventh in the race. Austria was worse: I was out on the opening lap when a big shunt ahead of me – I had qualified sixth – left me with nowhere to go and two other cars up my chuff. Once again there was only one way to come back from those disasters, and Monaco was the best possible place to do it.