It follows the shy young man as he was pushed by Neal to speak to Norbert Haug, director of the Mercedes motor sports program. “Aussie Grit” charts Webber’s path from his first outings in Formula Ford in Australia, to winning the prestigious Formula Ford Festival in England, to British F3 and not having the money to complete the 1997 season. They also eventually became a couple in life, too. And anyone who expressed doubts was doing us a favor as well: they simply made us all the more determined to show them what we could do.” It never occurred to us that things beyond our control might stand in our way, but then perhaps our naïveté worked in our favor. But now Ann and I had a plan and our assumption was that if we worked hard and refused to take no for an answer we would succeed. In fact if we’d known back then what we know now I doubt we would even have contemplated it. “We weren’t short of people telling us we were crazy even to entertain the idea of making it to F1. “Looking back, we were pretty naïve,” Webber writes. The two managed to lift the Australian country boy to the highest level of international racing and wealth. Neal had been looking for a driver to manage and Webber was there. He owes his career in no small part to Ann Neal, whom he met in the Formula Ford series in Australia and who had worked extensively in media and promotional work in her native Britain. Even while racing in England, he needed to earn extra cash as a driving instructor. He delivered pizzas, worked as a ball boy and, once he discovered go-karting as a teenager, worked at a go-kart track, where after the would stay until 2 a.m. And while most modern Formula One drivers have had coddled lives, Webber was a country boy, farming and working odd jobs. Webber grew up driving tractors, starting at age 10, unlike most of his contemporaries in the series, who at age 4 were already driving go-karts. More on Formula 1: Stories about drivers, teams and issues.How Do Drivers Fight Jet Lag? It affects performance, so they use caffeine, avoid light and shoo away hotel housekeeping.Rubber Meets the Road: During a race, determining which type of tire to use and when, can turn a loser into a winner - or vice versa.Please, no jewelry - and let’s discuss the underwear. Covered From Head to Toe: Drivers are loaded with equipment, like a biometric sensor and fire-resistant overalls, to keep them safe in racecars.It’s an improvement from when they used hand-held signs. Listening to the Radio: With the press of a button on the steering wheel, drivers communicate with their team.We find Webber, now 39, saying what he thinks and, in the process, displaying why he seemed so much more human than his contemporaries. So it is no surprise that Webber’s autobiography is a fabulously readable story told in his conversational voice, with the help of Stuart Sykes, an Australian journalist. And unlike the few others who also spoke their mind, Webber’s responses were rarely bitter, rarely went too far, and were almost always pertinent. In both his public image and in his dealings within the paddock, he was one of the most vocal and expansive drivers. Mark Webber, the Australian driver who left Formula One at the end of 2013 after 12 seasons, never quite fit that picture. The result is that many of today’s drivers are such perfect professionals that they have little to say beyond the one-line responses provided by their teams and sponsors. But none of them came from the homogenized background shared by today’s racers: go-karting as children, racing cars in their early teens, then climbing the lower categories to the top, with very little experience in life beyond their sport until they find themselves at the end of a Formula One career, wealthy and famous - and lost. In the early years of Formula One racing, the drivers were a diverse group of men with widely varying interests.
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