Happy 40th, Aussie Grit!

40

It's Mark Webber's 40th birthday today, something that hardly seems possible. He was born on August 27, 1976 in Queanbeyan, New South Wales in Australia where he started out racing motorcycles before moving to four wheels in 1991, taking up karting at age 14.

After rising through the national series, Webber moved to Europe in 1995 and competed in British Formula Ford, British Formula 3 and the FIA GT Championship. He became a Formula One test driver for Arrows in 2000 and made his race début with Minardi in his home race in 2002.

Stints at Jaguar and Williams followed, but but was the seven seasons with Red Bull that saw his best results in Grand Prix racing. he eventually retired from Formula One at the end of 2013 but he's certainly not been taking it easy since then, competing full time in the World Endurance Championship with Porsche where he helped seal the 2015 championship.

Happily Webber is still a familiar figure in the Formula One paddock, having started working with the media as a pundit for UK Channel 4's Formula One coverage.He's even been tapped to conduct some of the post-race podium interviews, and you can see him (below) talking with Lewis Hamilton after this year's British Grand Prix at Silverstone.

Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.