Porsche issued two press releases yesterday. One was telling the world how many gazillion Macans it has sold in 2016, the other announcing the retirement of Mark Webber. Well officially it said 'World class driver takes on new tasks at the end of the season' but, however it is phrased, Mark Webber won't be racing next year.
He will continue with Porsche, but as a representative and consultant for its sports car programmes. Given the formula effectively bookends his career, an image from Webber in a GT racer seemed most appropriate this Friday. And, well, CLK LMs are more interesting than Jaguar Formula 1 cars, aren't they?
This image is from the 1998 Le Mans 24 Hours, the first CLK of Jean-Marc Gounon, Christophe Bouchut and Ricardo Zonta leading Webber's car that he shared with Bernd Schneider and Klaus Ludwig. Webber didn't enjoy Le Mans success early on his career, with the 1998 race ending in retirement and then not making the race start due to that incident in 1999.
Having returned to sportscars after his spell in F1 Webber finally took to the podium at Le Mans last year with Porsche, his second place with Timo Bernhard and Brendon Hartley a much deserved and popular result on the way to an overall WEC title. Less than a day after his retirement, we're already hearing that Webber will be back in the paddock as part of Channel 4's F1 coverage from next year too. There's no getting rid of him just yet then, which sounds just fine by us. Nice work Mark, enjoy your retirement!