Mark Webber on his 918: ‘I won’t drive it in the rain’

Ahead of the inaugural 6 Hours of Nürburgring WEC race (which Mark Webber won in the Porsche 919 Hybrid alongside Timo Bernhard and Brendon Hartley), TG sat down with the ever-friendly Aussie and asked him about his 39th birthday present to himself: a £712,000 Porsche 918 Spyder, in a gorgeous, unique spec.

“My 911s are pretty stealthy, so I thought with the 918, ‘what am I going to do? I want to do something different.’ I want to see some racing heritage, since I’m a Porsche factory driver, and then I knew I was driving the red 919 at Le Mans, which looks sort of like the Salzburg livery 917, so I thought: ‘I can make that work…’

“Initially we toyed with so many ideas, in emails to and from the factory, sorting out how I wanted things. We started with stripping down the livery as much as possible [to fit the 918] while still trying to keep the concept in there. I think we got the balance pretty good.”

“The spec? It’s got the Weissach Package [saving 41kg with magnesium wheels,  carbon bucket seats and less soundproofing], and the black brake calipers, which are pretty rare. I’ve gone for the black wheels, and just having the car painted is pretty rare – a lot of them just have the wrap on. It looks, just…[Mark grins and shakes his head]… what they’ve done with it is stunning.”

“Inside I’ve gone pretty conservative. All my other RSs [Webber also owns a white 997 GT2 RS, a black 997 GT3 RS 4.0, and has a black 991 GT3 RS on order] are just pretty clean. That’s how I like them. I’ve gone for little things, like I wanted the fire extinguisher painted black, instead of red, and they’ve done a great job.”

“The number? It’s 605. I was in pretty big trouble trying to get [a 918] at the end of the production run as they started to sell pretty fast. So six and five makes eleven, and there’s a little bit of eleven in Porsche [think rear-engined sports cars] and David Campese, the rugby union player, was one of my first sponsors, and he wore the number 11. I ran number 11 when I was in Formula 3 as well.”

“It’s going to get a lot of love and lots of care. It won’t do a huge amount of miles initially, but it’s hard to leave it in the garage. I try to keep the mileage down on all the cars I’ve got – none of my cars have ever been out in the rain, and I want to keep them like that. I’d like to do good road trips in the 918 – it’s got good luggage space and the roof comes off, so it’s pretty functional. Personally, I believe some of its rivals struggle a bit of the utility front…”

“I just hate getting caught out by the weather, and I hate seeing those cars covered in grit and grime splashed up the wheelarches. I’m not sure where it’ll end up in terms of its main house [TG suggests avoiding Britain’s salty, craggy roads over winter, and Webber grimly agrees] but yeah, it’ll live somewhere sunny mate.”