• Red Bull news

My motivation has been lacking for two years - Webber

ESPN Staff
September 17, 2013 « Bottas targets Singapore points | Montoya returns to single seaters »
Mark Webber says he has tired of some aspects of Formula One © Associated Press
Enlarge

Mark Webber has admitted his motivation has been waning over the past two years in Formula One and he is looking forward to escaping some of the repetitive parts of his job when he makes a move to sports car racing next year.

Webber has been in F1 since 2002 when he first drove for Minardi at the age of 25. Since then he has driven for Jaguar, Williams and Red Bull, scoring nine wins with the latter. However, he has only once been a true contender for the drivers' championship in 2010 when he was beaten to the title by his team-mate Sebastian Vettel.

"I've been on the edge with F1, motivation-wise, for the past couple of years," he told F1 Racing magazine. "You have to be driven. You turn yourself around each winter and the fire in the belly is not quite what it was when you were 24.

"I remember hearing something about sportsmen and women years ago. They were saying that as long as they could keep their motivation, they would keep going. I could never work out what that meant. How could you lose your motivation? But questions keep coming to me more and more often that were never there in the past.

"It's not about driving or racing, it's about keeping my own F1 programme going for 11 months of the year. And it's just got to the point where it's like, well, I've achieved a lot of things."

Webber said his decision to race for Porsche in the World Endurance Championship had been spurred by some of the time consuming aspects of being an F1 driver.

"Travel and hotels," he said. "And probably the repetitive nature of the job. A bit of media. Lots and lots of small things that you're happy to deal with when you're bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

"But it does, in the end, force you to ask yourself the question: 'Do I have to be here, doing this?' And when Porsche came along, I could look myself in the eye and say: 'Well, you know what, I probably don't have to do some of those things any more."

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.
ESPN Staff Close