The Mark Webber Blog; News, History, Wallpapers and Full Race Videos

1/02/2007 - Testing Results

admin — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 14:50:20 +0000

A second RB3 was available today in Valencia, allowing both Coulthard and Webber to run at the same time. This was the first day of proper dry testing the team has done and 82 laps were completed between the two Red Bull Racing drivers. The team will be staying on for an extra day tomorrow to make up time lost due to the weather earlier in the week.

1	R. Schumacher	Toyota	1:11.297	60L
2	G. Fisichella	Renault	1:11.621	121L
3	H. Kovalainen	Renault	1:11.643	108L
13	D. Coulthard	RBR	1:13.450	59L
16	M. Webber	RBR	1:13.796	23L

Webber’s White Helmet And Newey

admin — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 14:48:46 +0000

On Tuesday Mark Webber was wearing a completely new white helmet in testing. He explained the helmet was a try-out for Red Bull’s chief designer Adrian Newey.

Webber explained speaking to F1Racing.net: “I’m trying a new Arai helmet. Adrian Newey wanted me to try the helmet just for legality. It’s not for me, but Adrian wanted to try it on Tuesday. It worked fine and we’re just trying it, but there’s no paintjob, obviously.”

The following day Webber explained his relationship and working with Newey as ‘bloody good’

“I’ve been lucky to work with brilliant engineers in the past. Patrick Head has an amazing amount of experience, Frank Dernie and Pat Symonds as well, but Adrian is something different. Don’t challenge him in a math contest!”

Testing & News Update

admin — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 14:46:19 +0000

David Coulthard continued testing the RB3 at Valencia today, finishing 15th in the standings over 3 seconds down on the days quickest man Fernando Alonso. Details are still sketchy, but it appears DC completed 23 laps by lunchtime in wet conditions, and was running as high as 4th. As the track dried out and warmed up the times tumbled by over 5 seconds, DC only managed to complete one more lap all afternoon in the better conditions; possible technical difficulties for the RB3? Testing continues tomorrow, February 1st.

In other news, Oliver White over at BlogF1 has been running a series of articles recently where he talks to people who run F1 sites and blogs; he finds out what makes them tick and what they think about modern F1. I was approached to join in and ofcourse I agreed, BlogF1 is a great site that I read daily (and so should you) so I was more than willing to take part, and you can now read my interview on the site. Pretty basic stuff from me but hopefully you enjoy it, there are other interviews on the site as well so theres plenty of interesting reading there on top of Olivers top notch regular work.

30/01/2007 - Testing Results

admin — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 14:43:40 +0000

Well after I went and hyped up this first day of testing at Valencia it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the days running was mostly ruined by the weather. Mark only managed to complete a handful of laps in the wet morning session, and as the day wore on and the track dried out he ended up in the gravel trap making the final times of not much use to us (Mark was second last, but ahead of a Ferrari so nothing can be made of the results).

It was an interesting day, with Fernando Alonso punting off Luca Badoer for no apparant reason. Alonso has been known for using his car to make a point with other drivers in practice and testing sessions, though footage of this incident suggests the double world champion simply made a mistake in the tricky conditions. He wasn’t the only one, with many cars seen trundling through the run off areas. The only other points of interest was BMW blowing an engine and Webber running an all white helmet, perhaps indicating a change of supplier. Hopefully tomorrow will be dry and the RB3 can have a full day of trouble free running.

1	F. Alonso	McLaren	1:12.563	85L
2	N. Piquet jr.	Renault	1:13.549	27L
3	F. Montagny	Toyota	1:13.672	33L
13	M. Webber	RBR	1:15.726	27L

* These times are not 100% verified, Renault, Autosport, F1.com and F1Racing are all giving different times so no need to contact me if you see differing times.

Night Of Nights

admin — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 14:42:58 +0000

Today is a big day for Red Bull Racing team and their drivers Mark Webber and David Coulthard. After last weeks two shakedown days the team will take their new car, the RB3, to it’s first proper days of testing at Valencia. The three day test will be attended by the RBR, Ferrari, Renault, McLaren, BMW, Honda, Williams and Super Aguri outfits. While Williams and Super Aguri will still be running their interim test cars the rest will be running with their 2007 challengers and the times will be open to public viewing.

Championship points aren’t awarded for testing, and undoubtably many teams including Red Bull will still be ironing the kinks out of their cars before they move onto the serious work of setting the cars up for racing but initial testing can still give us an idea of the strengths of each teams vehicles. A fundamentally good car will be quick right out of the blocks, and with the RB3 being the newest of the cars attending if it comes in anywhere near the top of the timesheets over the three days then Coulthard and Webber will be well pleased.

Ofcourse if the opposite happens it doesn’t mean the season is over, teams will be going through their own programs using different compounds, fuel loads and aerodynamic kits in an effort to test the cars in different conditions and validate wind tunnel figures at various levels of downforce. The teams keep this information close to their chests so we won’t get a definate idea of the running order until a few races into the ‘07 season.

Both David and Mark will be driving the RB3 throughout the course of the biggest test of the winter.

Australia ‘97 - Full Race

admin — Sun, 28 Jan 2007 14:40:39 +0000

I just want to say thankyou to Ryan who has donated a bit of hard earned cash to the Mark Webber Blog, it’s very kind of him. In return I’ll post a few races were DC does better than average since he’s a massive Coulthard fan. The first race I’ve put up for him is Australia 1997, which involves a race long battle between Frentzen, Schumacher (Michael) and ofcourse David who was at that stage just starting his second year at McLaren. Everyone can download the race obviously, it’s now up in the downloads section.

Solid First Day For The RB3

admin — Sat, 27 Jan 2007 14:38:09 +0000

The RB3 has completed it’s first official day of testing at the Barcelona circuit with no major problems. The team tried several different winglet variations through the day as Mark Webber had his first go in the Adrian Newey designed car, despite having some trouble with grip at Barcelonas new chicane Mark seemed happy with how the day went:

“I think the car feels good, to be honest. But there are still a lot of things that we have got to get on top of. As you know the car has done 60km in its whole life, so it is very, very early.”

“My first impressions are that it will be good.”

Reports indicate that the times were fairly close to the new Honda RA07 which has been running for several days around the track, clearly though we’ll need to wait until the 30th when the RB3 has it’s first serious test to get a solid indicator as to the performance of this car though Mark, Adrian and Christian were all smiles in the garage.

In site news, I’ve added another 6 images to the hi-res gallery so thanks to Red Bull Creative for that; all images within are for personal use only.

RB3 Launched!!!

admin — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:35:15 +0000

Red Bull Racing has launched the RB3 in Barcelona. The first Red Bull car to be designed under Adrian Newey certainly looks the part (lean and mean), and will hopefully be the car to get a break through win for Red Bull Racing and Mark Webber in 2007.

High quality RB3 images have been added to the wallpapers and gallery sections on this site. You can also check out smaller pics of the new car at the F1Racing website.

Happy Australia Day everyone.

RB3 First Pics!

admin — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 14:31:23 +0000

The RB3 has completed it’s first on track laps. Details are sketchy but it appears Red Bull took two photos then leaked them out to garner some interest, they’re shown below:

It looks pretty good from the limited angles we see here. The packaging looks tight and clean indicating they aren’t needing 20 million flickups to claw back downforce; this should aid straight line speed. The sidepods have a very McLaren feel to them, while the rear wing looks like a Renault concept and the wing mirrors are very F248. View the pics in larger format in the Mark Webber forum.

Full Race Downloads

admin — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 14:30:09 +0000

As I’m sure most of you have noticed, the Full Race Downloads are back for the time being. During the break I’ve uploaded a couple of new vids and I’ll be bringing those online in the next couple of days. I should also point out that we have a new contributor, Marshall the marshal - he’s been collecting F1 videos since before his dad was born. He’ll be uploading videos mainly from the 70s and 80s so thats something to look forward to in the coming months.

The first race he’s been kind enough to add is the Brazilian GP from 1987 at Rio, a worthy addition. I’ve also put Monaco 1997 up for download, JV fans probably won’t appreciate this one but it’s a good race none-the-less, especially for supporters of RBR and the teams that came before it. I hope you enjoy them both.

In other news, the RB3 is scheduled to be doing a shakedown test today before the launch on Friday, I’ll keep you all updated if this does indeed occur and if any pics get smuggled out!