Aussie Grit by Mark Webber Read Free Book Online

would take for granted, no doubt, but Luke had been parachuted into life Down Under and it was great that we were able to show him a snapshot of what we were all about.
    Late in 1994 Dad asked Ann if she could help us find some sponsorship. It wasn’t the kind of work she enjoyed most, but she had been keeping an eye on this family trying to find their way in the big wide world of motor racing and she must have seen something she liked, because eventually she agreed.
    ‘When I met Mark it struck me that maybe this was the driver I could try and manage,’ she says. ‘That was the challenge for me: having worked for Johnny Herbert’s management as he made his way up from Formula Ford to F1, I wanted to see if I could step up to the plate. When I got to know Mark I could see we had a lot in common and we both had a burning desire to be successful. One October day at Bathurst, where we had gone to watch the “Great Race”, he said, “I want to do something with my life.” He already knew he didn’t want to spend his whole life in Queanbeyan – he wanted something more and he washungry, which stuck in my mind. I don’t think he particularly knew what he wanted out of life and he certainly didn’t know how to carve out a career in motor sport, but the fact he wanted
something
gave me a great foundation to work with.’
    *
    By this stage both my parents were putting a bit of heat on me. Mum insisted that I finish my Higher School Certificate, which I did, although my results might not have been what she was hoping for. In Dad’s eyes getting results on track was the priority if I was to keep doing what I really wanted to do. Otherwise I would have had to get a ‘real’ job, and I knew how fortunate I was – I could work with Dad, I had that safety net and I think inside I believed I would use it at some stage.
    But I was keen by now to make racing my focus, and that meant taking the first major step on my journey: getting out of Queanbeyan. So I did something that horrified Disey: I went to live in Sydney. We’d met Spencer Martin in 1994 when his son Matt was racing with me in Formula Ford. When we went to that first Amaroo Park meeting Dad and I were driving in to the circuit when he spotted Spencer and said to me, ‘Mark, I’ll tell you a bit about this fellow in a minute but right now we’re going to pitch camp alongside him.’
    He was well aware of Spencer’s background and thought he was one of the best drivers Australia had produced. Spencer had won the Gold Star as Australia’s outstanding racing driver in 1966 and 1967, he had taken a break from the track to marry and start a family, and then returned toexcel in Historic racing and Porsches. Among other claims to fame, Spencer drove for well-known Australian racing identity David McKay’s Scuderia Veloce team, worked as a mechanic to Graham Hill in the Tasman Series, and generally knew everything there was to know about starting a career as a racing driver. Dad and Spencer hit it off from the start. He felt it was like our relationship with the Dukes family: good people, and in the end we are still great friends to this day. ‘Another good decision by old Al!’ as Dad likes to remind me. When I moved to Sydney, it was the Martin family who took me in and I stayed with them up until the time I first travelled to the UK late in 1995 to go and see the Formula Ford Festival.
    I earned my keep as a driving instructor at the Oran Park circuit. Meanwhile Ann and I put together six sponsorship proposals, though we didn’t have a huge amount to put into the document because I hadn’t achieved much in 1994. But she put me in a professional studio to get some decent shots done and we had the proposals ready just before Christmas. It had to be done then because by the time everybody straggled back to work in February it would be far too late.
    One of the proposals landed on the desk of Bob Copp at Yellow Pages. He called us up straightaway. So Ann flew down