“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 has won nine grands prix during his F1 career and narrowly missed out
on the championship in 2010. But he admits there are many aspects of being a
professional driver that he will not miss.
“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.”
(Edited by Ben Bloom)