Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race Results

Webber pre-warned Vettel about book

Mark Webber says he spoke to Sebastian Vettel about the content of his autobiography before publishing his book this year.

Webber brought out Aussie Grit earlier this year, documenting his rise from racing in Australia to challenging for the world championship with Red Bull. His tempestuous relationship with Vettel as his team-mate was featured in the book and when asked if he spoke to the four-time world champion before it came out, Webber told the Clare Balding Show on BT Sport: “I did, yeah.

“After I retired from F1 there was a clause in my contract that said I couldn’t write a book for another year. So I had to wait. We obviously didn’t put a huge amount of the guts of the book together but we had to move pretty quickly because obviously everyone forgets people pretty quick.

“Let’s be honest, books cover a good bar bill, it’s not going to change the world. So we thought we’d put a book out really just for motorsport fans and just to tell a bit of a story about how it all came together. But obviously there are some juicy chapters in there in terms of my racing specifically at the front with Sebastian.

“So I rang him up - he was racing at the Monaco Grand Prix and I wasn’t staying too far away - and I said: ‘Look, I want to come down and if you’ve got ten minutes I just want to run a few things past you.’ And he said: ‘Yeah, no worries’. So I went down I think it was like an hour and a half later.

“He said that he has changed and improved as well. He was young at the time. Look, we all do things at parts of our careers where we could have maybe handled or done differently throughout [due to] that inexperience or naivety or emotions. That happens in top line sport, business or whatever it is. So we went through some tough periods and Seb said: ‘Look, I fully expect sections of the book where you are probably going to tee off on me’.”

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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.