Mark Webber has declared that his return to the Le Mans 24 Hour in June – for the first time since two frightening flips in 1999 – holds no fears for him.
Then a 22-year-old member of the Mercedes-Benz AMG world sports car squad, Webber’s world twice went blue-green-blue-green while at the controls of factory CLR-GT1 sports racers.
The Australian escaped uninjured, but initially copped some blame from the team for the incidents. However, a similar flip by teammate Peter Dumbreck five hours into the endurance classic made it clear the car’s aerodynamics were at fault.
Benz subsequently shelved the program, prompting Webber to turn to Formula 3000, from which he graduated to Formula One in 2002.
He returns to Le Mans this year to lead Porsche’s new World Endurance Championship campaign driving the recently unveiled 919.
“That’s racing, things happen,” Webber told Wheels at last week’s 911 Turbo launch at Phillip Island when asked about the flips. “Le Mans is a great track, I always enjoy driving there.
“The incidents probably weren’t my fault, so it’s encouraging from a driver’s perspective to know there are no real demons there for me to get over.
“I have had a long, long career… I have had incidents along the way and that’s part of the game, to get back off the canvas and go again.
“Le Mans was actually the making of me because it made my career, making me start again back into single-seaters. So those shunts actually played a role in me achieving a lot more things.”
Given how busy he will be with the Porsche 919 LMP1 WEC program once he gets to Le Mans, Webber says he will have little brain space to devote to reflecting on 1999.
“When I drive back past those scenes, I think I will be focussing on the job at hand,” he said. “It probably will come into my mind – there was a lot of emotions when I was there last time – but it won’t be something that anyone will notice.”
Webber says he hasn’t had any regrets leaving F1 for WEC and the new challenge the 2.0-litre V4 petrol-electric hybrid all-wheel-drive 919 poses.
“The car is quick, it’s enjoyable to drive with that level of downforce and technology,” Webber said. “Its performance is pretty impressive.
“We are on a such a learning curve with it at the moment, even driving technique, all those types of things. The driver is in the loop in terms of how we use the technology, how we get the recovery off the car in terms of all the battery technology, how we use the hybrid in certain parts of the lap.
“We are trail-blazing at the moment and it’s early days.”
Magazine editors are sick, sadistic creatures. After learning Mick Doohan – a man famous for hanging off motorbikes at 300km/h – was about to take me for a hot lap on a wet Albert Park, I’d been given a special instruction. “Distract him,” grinned my editor. “See if you can put him off.”
So it was at 220km/h, the car skipping and slipping into Turn One like a drunken figure-skater, that I asked the stupidest question of my career. “Mick, what’s nine times six?”
Doohan’s never one to hold back, but I wasn’t expecting what came next.
“Maths! F–k, I can’t even do that when I’m not driving hot,” he laughs, prodding the throttle and catching the car as it spits sideways. “Jesus f–king hell, f–ked if I know! It’s f–king 54 isn’t it?”
Three more questions and three profanity-laden, but correct answers later, it’s clear Doohan’s no easy man to put off. Particularly given he’s only got one hand on the wheel. The other is stabbing furiously at the traction control button.
“Let’s get this thing operating,” he says. “I don’t know what grip levels we’ve got here, but we’ll soon find out.”
Mick’s driving a Mercedes-Benz C63 AMG 507, the same car he’s been using to race, and beat, a V8 Supercar and Formula 1 racer all weekend in the Ultimate Speed Comparison. But this is no ordinary hot lap.
Thanks to Mercedes, Wheels has been given exclusive access to a hot Albert Park circuit, straight after F1 qualifying. That meant dodging F1 cars, their brakes still smoking, as we pottered down pit lane, marshals blowing shrill whistles to clear a path through the drivers and teams.
“Look, they’ve even left the tyre bundles out for us,” says Mick, hurling our blood red Benz at one. “It’s a great little car this, particularly for this kind of thing. Hell, it’s no F1 car, but it’s fun and at my age, all I want to do is have fun, you know?”
With the traction control now off, Mick’s certainly not holding back. He might be 48, but he’s still quick, even if it is on four wheels, not two. And don’t think he’s gentle, either. He bashes the brake pedal for full ABS stops, throws the nose at the apex and mashes the throttle for extended drifts on exit.
“Oh, it is slippery isn’t it!” he chuckles as the Benz lurches sideways off a kerb, its wheels spinning on the wet paint.
It’s clear Doohan’s enjoying himself, but it’s halfway through the second lap that I finally manage to find a topic to distract him – Michael Schumacher.
The pair have been great friends since they both won world titles in 1994. Their families are so close that Schumacher even named his first born after Doohan.
With the German ace still in an induced coma after a skiing accident in December, Doohan’s unsure if they’ll ever speak again.
“Ah mate, it’s just terrible what’s happened,” he says, slowing slightly. “I’ve just got to pray he’s going to come through it, you know?
“Of course our families have been in contact; we’ve been mates for ages and the girls are good friends. We were living beside each other basically in Europe and even holidayed together.”
It’s clearly a raw topic, but Mick isn’t sombre for long.
“He’s already left a massive legacy, hasn’t he?” he grins. “But f–ked if I know what makes him such a great driver. We raced in the Race of Champions and he completely flogged me.
“He’s achieved some amazing things and it’ll be some time before anyone can beat him. Sebastian Vettel is the only guy with a chance, but it’s going to be a long time before we see somebody do anything similar.”
With that, Doohan flicks the Benz back into pit lane, which is still crowded with swarms of mechanics and half-assembled F1 cars.
“I’m sorry it was so wet for you,” he chuckles as we roll to a stop. “In the dry I can actually make it move around a bit more. But I can’t believe I got that maths right! Enough of that shit, though; you had me worried.”
What is it about the act of sitting in a car that so massively lowers the IQ of the average human being?
I’m not, for once, talking about the way otherwise intelligent, sentient beings fail to cope with the co-ordination and clear thinking required to operate a motor vehicle, I’m enquiring about why so many people choose to dribble excrement into their ears via their car radios. The kind of turgid, retched garbage they’d surely never willingly listen to at home, or in public.
Perhaps some people see the car (much like the internet) as a place to indulge their baser instincts in a way they wouldn’t consider if their friends were watching, or listening.
How else can we explain the success of the atrociously amoral and ear-blisteringly banal Kyle Sandilands and Jackie O? I had hoped that their employment by Sydney’s 2DayFM was some kind of horrific accident, but the two of them recently moved to another network, Kiis, and zillions of people followed them. 2Day’s morning ratings dropped from 10.4 percent share to 3.8, while Kiis shot from 3.3 percent to 9.3, simply by employing two of the greatest gibberers the world has ever seen.
I admit I don’t listen to a lot of their work – if I have the radio on, I am effectively channel-blind; I listen to music and when it stops I change the station – but I have caught their musings a few times since their Kiis move, more by accident than design.
I won’t attempt to quote them exactly, but here is the essence of a recent exchange I heard between Kyle and Jackie in what was presented, unbelievably, as a highlight reel advertising their show:
“I did a poo.”
“Nooo, wow, really? You didn’t, did you? Really? A poooo? Nooooo!”
“Yes, I did a poo. A big one.”
“Wow. I did a poo once, too. At a friend’s house. It was totes embarrassing.”
“Fnar. Fnar. Bums smell. Poo. Big bottoms.”
“Poooooo! Ha ha ha ha ha!!!”
This, it seems, is the kind of sparkling repartee that millions of motorists are looking for to brighten their days on the drudge to work of a morning. And I’m not really singling out Sydney here, because there are similar, perhaps slightly less gormless, “DJs” on other stations around the country, and indeed the world. Have you ever noticed how similar the ‘presenter voice’ is, no matter where you are on the globe? It’s particularly hilarious in Germany.
The other common tactic on breakfast radio is to pump dangerous amounts of nitrous oxide into the booth with the cackling gibbons, so that they will laugh at absolutely anything – not just their own parlous jokes – in the hope that listeners will be caught up in the comic contagion.
If you’re one of the people who tunes in to this tosh-pot trash every day, and you may well be, avail yourself of a mirror, have a good gaze into it and ask yourself, why? Whale-song recordings would be better (although it could be argued that Sandiland’s bleatings are whale songs, of a kind) or even, God forbid, country music.
Breakfast radio is rotting your brain. And, to be fair, Jackie O and Kyle aren’t even the worst, or most popular offenders. In Sydney, the overall number-one audience share, at 15.2 percent, belongs to Alan Jones.
Don’t even start me.
When the news media is raising outrage based on something awful that an innocent member of the public has filmed and then YouTubed, we can normally all get on board.
Awful phone videos of people being racially vilified on a train, or teenagers attacking some bloke on a bus, these are open and shut cases of people being arseholes, and we are all rightly riled.
But when I watch video of the recent “dooring” incident and the supposed subsequent abuse of a cyclist, which has caused such kerfuffle, I simply can’t bleat along with the apparent masses.
The clip (below) is filmed from a cyclist’s eye view on a GoPro helmet camera. It shows a taxi passenger opening his door, the bicycle barrelling into it, and the typically fired up and indignant cyclist then demanding his details so he can be reported to the police and, presumably, capsicum-sprayed and then Tasered.
Just ponder this for a start: The only reason the victim here is wearing a camera in the first place – and lots of cyclists do this now – is to try and catch out a motorist, or anyone for that matter, transgressing on their God-given right to ride their damn bikes wherever and whenever they like.
They’re a sad bunch, I don’t deny it, but surely even cyclists aren’t dim enough to sit and watch footage of their commute to work (although if they really cut up a motorist and made him angry they’d probably show that bit to their bicycle buddies). No, the only reason they do it is because they’re argey little buggers, and they love a fight.
What’s stunning about this incident, though, is that I can’t quite see how the bloke who gets out of the taxi – on the KERB SIDE of the road, mind you – in Melbourne’s Collins Street (where there isn’t a cycle path) is in the wrong.
Sure, if he was getting out on the right-hand side and didn’t check behind him, and thus took down a cyclist, that would be poor form and, under Victorian law at least, illegal. But surely the way the cyclist was riding up the inside lane, undercutting traffic, is so stupid that no normal person should have to be prepared for it?
“You ride up the inside of a car that’s stopped at the lights, you are a fool,” one of the guilty parties can be heard complaining on the video. Which sounds like a reasonable argument to me.
“The way people like you ride around is disgusting,” is another line that has really got the media, and the cyclists, fired up. But as a person who may have said even more inflammatory things to a cyclist in the past, I don’t think I should throw stones. The fact is, I resemble that remark.
Until this story broke, I was unaware – as the blokes in the video clearly were – that “dooring” was an actual criminal offence, and apparently the Victorian government increased the fines for this crime from $141 to $352, and the maximum court penalty from $423 to $1408. No doubt after some serious lobbying from one of the most vocal minorities out there – cyclists.
The main thing is that we all remember that these angry, sweaty little people are out there, filming every moment of their dull, droll and dreary lives, and that the next time you question why they should be allowed to make you wait while they cycle down the middle of a city road at 20km/h in a 60km/h zone, they might catch your comments on camera and make you a YouTube pariah.
You have been warned.
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Skoda’s Vision C concept previews more dramatic proportions and provides definite hints to the appearance of next year’s all-new Superb range.
The five-door liftback coupe sits in the Czech brand’s line-up between the new Octavia and the Superb, although Skoda refuses at this stage to provide any dimensions beyond saying it is around 4700mm long and 1820mm wide, and claiming only that it plans for a new four-seat model to join the fast-expanding model line-up in 2016.
Another model built on VW’s flexible MQB architecture, Vision C is expected to share its basic underpinnings with the next-generation VW Passat and, especially, the drop-top VW CC.
Despite the much lower roofline, Skoda swears the concept retains the roomy interior and practicality that are brand essentials.
Skoda says the 0.26cd drag coefficient is a best-ever figure for one of its production cars, and that the styling is 90 percent a realistic preview of the production version.
A bolder shallow grille, taut surfaces and a triangular theme to its lights are elements expected to carry through to other new Skoda models such as the next Superb.
Skoda chairman Winfried Vahland says a greater priority is being placed on design “and we want to combine this with our traditional practical qualities in more sophisticated cars”.
The Vision C is powered by the same 1.4-litre direct-injection engine used in the Golf TGI and Audi A3 G-Tron that can run on either petrol or natural gas, but it is engineered to use a wide variety of existing and future VW Group engines from 1.4-litre to 2.0-litres, in both front- and all-wheel-drive layouts.
The final instalment in Volvo’s three-part design story has emerged at Geneva, showing a sleek, heavily sculpted wagon featuring an interior that could revolutionise the brand.
Following on from the Concept Coupe and the Concept XC Coupe, the Volvo Concept Estate takes the work of Volvo senior vice-president of design Thomas Ingenlath to its conclusion.
Volvo says the centrepiece of the Concept Estate is the interior design and its new centre console display that removes many of the buttons once used to control in-car functions, replacing them with a touchscreen.
The estate concept also provides valuable clues to the styling of the Volvo XC90, a large seven-seat SUV that has remained largely unchanged since its 2003 introduction. A new version of the XC90, featuring an all-new interior, is due late this year.
Volvo also used Geneva to launch more fuel-efficient Drive-E versions of its V40 range, including a manual version of the wagon that emits only 85g CO2/km, making it greener than Toyota’s environmental poster car, the Prius.
Volvo says the Drive-E technology will be available in all new Volvo models, apart from the XC90, from May. However, it does not currently sell any Drive-E branded vehicles in Australia.
It was inevitable that Alfa Romeo would do a topless version of the mid-engined, rear-drive 4C sports car and it duly revealed a Spider at Geneva that it says will go into production early in 2015.
Changes from the show car seen here are certain. For one thing, it lacks any of the necessary attachment hardware for a targa roof.
But the Spider does bring some pleasant surprises. It features a new and normal-looking headlight design that’s much more attractive than the insect-eye items being fitted to the hardtop 4Cs currently emerging from Alfa’s assembly line in Modena.
Hopefully, the Spider’s headlights will be adopted for all 4C production sometime in the future. The sooner, the better.
The Spider also features a dual-stage central exhaust system made from titanium and carbon, with an electrically operated valve that’s wirelessly connected to the car’s electronics. This high-tech system is the work of motorcycle muffler specialist Akrapovic and is likely to make an appearance on future 4C options lists or special editions.
BMW’s new 2 Series Coupe has landed in Oz and Wheels was invited to shakedown an M235i as part of the BMW Driving Experience at Phillip Island. Who could resist an offer like that?
The half-day program included driver training and plenty of seat time on the GP Circuit in the 428i and cracking new M235i.
A bit of friendly competition followed in a 220i M Sport on a wet motorkhana course.
Phillip Island’s long, fast corners were the perfect proving ground for the Coupes. The new M235i was star of the show with its impeccable balance and magnificent powertrain.
We left with a smile on our faces, thanks largely to the closing hot lap in a E92 M3, skilfully wheeled by one of BMW’s driving instructors. We were treated to a repertoire of moves featuring more glorious oversteer than you could poke a smoking tyre at.
Motor show girls occassionally steal the thunder of their automotive counterparts. With snow falling outside the halls of New York’s International Auto Show we were happy to let them turn up the heat.
It would be a real shame to leave images like these on the cutting room floor, so here’s a selection of good sorts in the name of good journalism.
You can blame all sorts of things – poor driver training, entitled gen-Y, the myriad distractions that surround us, from earbud-implanted music to texting – but you’re pointing at the symptoms, not the cause.
The problem is ignorance. Everywhere, in every way, people are ignorant every day. It no longer surprises me that they endlessly surprise me with their staggering levels of ignorance.
You see it everywhere. They stop in front of you at the foot of the escalator, in shop doorways, at the edge of the train platform. They’re not bad at walking, they’re just goddamned ignorant morons.
For a bit of R&R, I kayak on glorious Port Phillip Bay. How’s the serenity? Piss poor at times, because some fisho has had enough and needs to get his boat on the trailer now, so he cuts across you and throws his wash your way.
Ignorance doesn’t need an engine, though. As I was riding the surf back in to a beach the other morning, a greybeard ocean swimmer strode to the water’s edge and stood in front of me. He wasn’t protesting my presence (this beach has signs clearly showing where boats can land); I don’t think he was even conscious I was there. He was in his own little bubble. Ignorant of everything beyond the self.
Cars merely highlight the problem. The car is the extended self where the bumps and knocks of pedestrian life are magnified. The ignorant masses swirl around, paying no attention, putting their cars in the wrong places, crossing all three lanes at will, driving at 50 in a 70. And while they’re drifting around like a fart in a trance, in their mind they are the only person on the road.
I don’t know how we get around it. It’s not driver training, it’s something more fundamental. But when you get home and someone in your family tells you that they don’t remember the drive home, give them a bloody good slap from me.
