Australian born Mark Webber has spent his career in motorsport. Making his way up to the top of his game in Formula 1 where he competed for 12 years – which included 9 Grand Prix wins and then moving on to be crowned World Champion in the FIA World Endurance World Championship with Porsche.
His Formula One career saw him racking up an impressive tally of 42 podium finishes, 13 pole positions and 19 fastest laps during his time with RedBull Racing 2007-2013. The Aussie finished third in the World Drivers’ Championship three times, including in his final year.
Stepping away from single seater racing he moved onto the FIA WEC driver for the famous Porsche team. Endurance racing is all about teamwork. Sharing the car with two other drivers and competing for the ultimate a 24 hour race meant a completely different skillset required to be successful. And he was when the trio were crowned World Champions in 2015.
Off the track, the less time-consuming environment of the WEC happily enabled Mark to pursue more of his adventure-based goals and in 2014 he took on the legendary Leadville Trail 100 MTB – a one hundred mile mountain bike race across the high-altitude, extreme terrain of the Colorado Rockies, starting at 10,152 feet and climbing to 12,424 feet. Mark finished the race well within the golden nine-hour window and ever the competitor, returned the following year with the aim of ‘shaving off a few seconds’ and successfully beat his time. Mark completed the gruelling race for a third time in 2018.
Always keen on outdoor pursuits and wanting to give back to his home country, Mark launched the Mark Webber Tasmania Challenge in the F1 off-season of 2003. Currently taking a sabbatical, the seventh cycle of the gruelling charitable adventure race took place in December 2013 and to date the event has raised over $1.5 million AUD for charities in Australia. Mark explains it was the Challenge events, along with his love of the great outdoors, that kindled the idea for Aussie Grit Apparel, a new off-road running and cycling sports apparel brand that Mark is the architect behind – the first range launched late 2017.