Driver In Focus: Mark Webber

Mark Webber was born on the 27^thof August 1976 in Queanbeyan , Australia.

He started his relationship with sport at a young age, working as a ball boy for premiership winning rugby league team, the Canberra Raiders, during the late 1980s. However, motorsport was where his interest lay, later listing Formula One World Champion Alain Prost and Grand Prix motorcycle racer Kevin Schwantz as his childhood heroes.

Starting out racing motorcycles, Webber moved to four wheels in 1991, taking up karting at the age of 14. He won the New South Wales state championship in 1993, and moved straight into the Australian Formula Ford Championship after his father bought him an ex-Craig Lowndes Van Diemen FF1600.

Driver In Focus: Rubens Barrichello

The Development Years

Rubens Gonçalves “Rubinho” Barrichello (born May 23, 1972 in São Paulo) is a Brazilian Formula One racing driver.

Both his father and paternal grandfather are also named Rubens, and Barrichello shares his father’s birthday: May 23. Therefore, Rubens Barrichello was known as Rubinho (Portuguese for “little Rubens”), which has become his nickname.

Barrichello won five karting titles in Brazil before going to Europe to race in the Formula Vauxhall Lotus series in 1990. In his first year, he won the championship, a feat he replicated the following year in the British Formula 3 Championship, beating David Coulthard. He very nearly joined Formula One, the highest category of single seater racing, at just 19 years of age. Instead he competed in Formula 3000 in 1992. He finished third in the championship, and joined the Jordan Formula One team for the 1993 Formula One season. During this time, and also early in his Formula One career, Barrichello lived in Banbury & Cumnor, Oxfordshire, UK.