Free Aussie Grit by Mark Webber

around in the wet … and not going off! I was wide awake and I wasn’t going to let it go.
    It was an important victory for me. There were 120 guys from different countries having a crack, and only 25–30 made the final, so to win it was a bit of a statement. But it was an early reminder of something I would remember throughout my career, namely that talent is no guarantee of success. There was a lot of quality in that Brands Hatch field but a lot of it was never realised because most of those young racers didn’t have the iron self-belief and determination that makes you keep going.
    A win like that is important because it leads nicely into Formula 3. People realise you’ve got the head to win the festival, and the pace; drivers who have done well there must be doing something right. Of course there was still a lot I needed to be tested on, but that win gave me some confidence and, more importantly, it gave people around me some confidence as well. As Ann says, you can do so much off the track but you’ve still got to go and get the results, and if I had crashed and burned in that final, who knows where we might have ended up.
    Opportunities certainly opened up after that half-hour race. I was given a free test in a Formula 3 car, and that was to have enormous consequences later on. In fact I drove just about every car known to motor-racing man in themonth after my festival win. Formula Opel at Zandvoort in Holland was an enjoyable experience; I did a Redgrave Racing Formula Renault test at Snetterton and one for Hayward Racing at Mallory Park, but our thoughts were already turning quite firmly towards F3.
    As a footnote to that Brands Hatch weekend, I remember a juicy little confrontation that took place long after the track action was done and dusted. Fans may remember a Grand Prix driver called Martin Donnelly, whose F1 career was ended by a brutal accident in his Lotus at Jerez in Spain in September 1990. Well, Martin’s dad was at Brands that weekend. The Kentagon’s a famous pub at the circuit; everyone goes there to eat and drink after the race, win, lose or draw. It was pretty special to have the festival trophy presented to me a second time there in the pub, but Donnelly Senior had had a bit too much to drink. My parents had come over to watch me race – in fact Dad spent a fair amount of time with us in England during 1996 – and this bloke said or did something that left my mum less than impressed. My mechanic was a guy called Micky Galton, and Micky was not a man to be messed with – his hands were the size of shovels. Dad can usually take care of any nonsense, but he was in the background at this point, so Micky went up to Donnelly’s dad, grabbed hold of him so that his little toes were dangling off the floor, and said, ‘If you f#*k up this young boy’s night …’ We had a few lemonades after that and I drove home a happy man!
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    With the festival win under my belt, Team Webber was ready to take on the world. First we were going back to Australiato find lots of money, and that was our first mistake: there wasn’t any to be found. Corporate Australia was convinced that Craig Lowndes was Australia’s next F1 driver, because he had just embarked on a career in F3000 after winning in V8 touring cars at home. This was so frustrating to hear: no disrespect to Craig, he’s a great driver, but there was no way in the world anyone could pitch up in Europe to race F3000 without doing the junior categories first. They’d get eaten alive.
    One group of people in Australia who showed faith in me and did their best to keep the Webber name in people’s minds were the guys at Channel 9, who in the early days of my motor-racing career were the F1 broadcasters in Australia. Whenever I came back home, they would ask me into their Sydney studios to offer my own comments on their F1 telecasts alongside Alan Jones and their larger-than-life host, Darrell Eastlake. They also invited me on to their popular