Rewind: Mark Webber's 2002 debut of dreams
Friday, 24 March 2023
Mark Webber was in his first F1® race when the 2002 Formula 1® season kicked off at Albert Park; two decades later, that March afternoon remains the most memorable in Melbourne history.
Mark Webber had waited a long time, but time was something he didn't have a lot of.
The 2002 Australian Grand Prix was the seventh in Albert Park's world championship history, but the first time an Australian driver had started their home race. Queanbeyan-born Webber was 25 years old – for context, reigning two-time F1® champion Max Verstappen is the same age now – and was on a three-race contract with the Minardi team to prove he belonged in the top flight. He only needed one, on what became arguably the biggest moment in Albert Park's F1® history.
Minardi had become the team Australia had grown to love from the previous season, when Melbourne-born aviation entrepreneur Paul Stoddart took over the ownership of the perennial backmarker squad. When Spanish teenager Fernando Alonso – whatever happened to him? – used a promising debut F1® campaign in 2001 to score a reserve driver role with Renault the following season, Minardi had an opening – and Webber, backed by Australian Grand Prix chairman Ron Walker among others, was picked to fill it.
In an underfunded car short on testing mileage, Webber qualified in 18th place, and simply making the finish would have been a win of sorts; those goals changed when Ralf Schumacher's Williams clattered into Rubens Barrichello's Ferrari at the first corner on the first lap, eight cars getting caught up in the resultant mayhem and retiring.
Points were only available for the top six finishers back in 2002, but Webber, Stoddart – and all of Australia – suddenly had a shot.
Even after a calamitous 54-second pit stop on lap 35 after his car's fuel flap stubbornly remained open, Webber looked on track for points, but had Finnish driver Mika Salo breathing down his neck in a much faster Toyota, the Japanese manufacturer making its F1® debut. It was here that Webber's race craft – he was an F1® rookie but vastly experienced through his sports car exploits on the way to the top flight – came to the fore.
"There was a lot of radiator coolant in the first sector, from Turn 1 all the way down to Turn 3," Webber explains today.
"I thought 'if I stay on the inside all the way to Turn 3, it's going to be difficult for him'. He got on the radiator coolant that was super, super slippery and he spun the car – once I knew he did that, I could really look after the car and finish those last few laps."
When he did cross the line – in a race where just eight cars were classified and race-winner Michael Schumacher lapped everyone up to third place in his Ferrari – the Albert Park grandstands erupted in a scene of unbridled nationalistic joy that hadn't been seen at Albert Park before, nor seen since.
After the podium ceremony honoring Schumacher, Juan Pablo Montoya (Williams) and Kimi Raikkonen (McLaren), Webber and Stoddart were summoned to the rostrum for their own impromptu celebration, complete with an Australian flag and – of course – a boxing kangaroo. It wasn't strictly protocol, but few who were trackside cared, or had a dry eye.
"The car shouldn't have got to the end – but it did!" Webber says.
"We got points – old-school points – so that was clearly a ginorous moment in my Formula One career. I think it was a message to a lot of Australians who had been so patient following Formula One at the time … it was a huge crowd that day and the place was just going off."
Stoddart, speaking on the In the Fast Lane podcast in 2022, says the memories of that autumn afternoon at Albert Park still make him "get emotional" two decades on.
"The funniest thing is that they couldn't play the national anthem … so they played what I call the expat Australia song, 'I Still Call Australia Home'," Stoddart laughs.
"The champagne hid Mark's and my tears. You couldn't script it, couldn't write it. That's half the reason half of Australia still thinks we won the race, because they saw us up on the podium."
