Mark Webber has no regrets as he prepares for life after Formula One Mark Webber ahead of the US Grand Prix (Photo by Paul Gilham/Getty Images) Source: Getty Images No letting up from Sebastian Vettel, with the world champion leading teammate Mark Webber to a Red Bull one-two in the second practice at the US Grand Prix. MARK Webber embarks this week on the final kilometres of a 12-year journey through the hinterland of Formula One. The very decent days, he admits, have been a massive high. Overall I have been dealt a good hand, Webber says. I never imagined I'd be here this long. The bad days, through the years of uncompetitive cars, and the breakdown of his relationship with his Red Bull teammate, Sebastian Vettel, have stretched the patience and renowned good humour of a fair-dinkum Aussie from Queanbeyan. As world champion for a fourth consecutive year, it seems Vettel is now racing against history. To Webber, Vettel is part angel at the wheel of a Formula One car and part devil in disguise. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Webber was conspicuous by his absence at Vettel's most recent celebrations. "It was his thing," Webber says. I've done that once - that was enough. Webber is arguably the least pretentious driver in modern Formula One. Over a cappuccino and a chicken wrap, he delivers candid impressions of Vettel and Lewis Hamilton, as well as offering his recollections of a dozen years spent on the inside of a sport capable of hi-tech and low skulduggery. His story began with a three-race contract at his home race, the Australian Grand Prix, to drive for Minardi, the lowliest team on the grid. He leaves after driving in Sunday's US Grand Prix in Texas, followed by the Brazilian Grand Prix next Sunday, where he can expect a blitz of affection from fans, rival drivers and team personnel throughout the pit-lane, with his reputation intact as a man described last week by respected pundit Martin Brundle as a "straight talking Aussie, who will be much missed." Mark Webber prepares of the US Grand Prix. (Photo by Paul Gilham/Getty Images) Source: Getty Images Vettel should not expect a Christmas card from Webber. Their already strained relationship, which plummeted downhill after their collision at the Turkey Grand Prix in 2010, reached a nadir at the Malaysian Grand Prix this year. Vettel blithely disobeyed team orders to take victory from Webber, who was powerless to defend his lead as he had lowered his engine settings in the belief the race was over. From that point, Vettel's march to his fourth world championship was greeted by booing at a series of races. His supporters claimed it was an unfair outcry against the monopoly of a driver who won his seventh race in a row at the last grand prix in Abu Dhabi. However, Webber, 37, senses other forces were at work. "I don't think it happened because Seb has been winning all the time," he says. Usain Bolt doesn't get booed - and he wins every race, or nearly every race, he enters. It's interesting how the general public take a stance on some things. By inference, Webber says that he could not have won like that. "You have to be able look at yourself in the mirror, mate," he says, pointedly. Obviously, you need to be ruthless at times. I know you can't be a little teddy bear and roll over, but I am happy about the way I have gone about my career. That two or three weeks after Malaysia was tense for us both. Mark Webber chats to Ferrari's Fernando Alonso. I think after the race his initial reaction was correct, I think he was shattered at what he had done as he said in Malaysia. But his reaction two weeks later in China when he said that he was not sorry at all was probably not the best way to encourage people what to think of him. Webber plans to throw a party at Red Bull's HQ in Milton Keynes after the season, as a mark of his gratitude for all the memories he has shared with a team where he earned all of his nine Formula One victories. If he feels indifferent towards Vettel, Webber does admire the skill of a man still just 26 years old. "Seb's phenomenal, a very tough act," Webber admits. I think he will reach Michael Schumacher's total of seven championships, no problem. Webber also insisted Vettel's dominance was not solely attributable to the genius of Red Bull design guru, Adrian Newey. Seb has won a lot of races when the car has been good, but he has also won a lot when the car hasn't been good. Seb is like Alain Prost, but with a qualifying lap at his fingertips. Impressive. Also, he hardly ever makes a mistake. It's not all the car. It's been fascinating for me to be in the boxing ring with him. I will look back at that and, realise you have understood a lot about yourself from what went on. It was a big juicy part of Formula One. Of course, I would have loved to have had a seven-year offset in age with Seb, instead of the 11-year difference between us. It would probably have exploded properly, then. South Korean fans show their appreciation of Mark Webber. (Photo by Mark Thompson/Getty Images) Source: Getty Images Webber, if truthful, probably expected Hamilton to have figured more strongly since Vettel replaced the British driver as the youngest champion in Formula One history, winning his first title in 2010, at the age of 21 years and 134 days old. Hamilton missed the title by one point in his blistering rookie season in 2007, then won the championship the following year. With Lewis going into 2014 having just one championship, I don't think many of us would have signed up for that after those first two years in F1. He is having trouble expressing himself on the Pirelli tyres, like me. It's not meant to be an excuse - even if it probably sounds like one - but it's obvious I had less success on the Pirellis. One of my biggest strengths is fast corners. For me, I have had to lift through the fast corners, it's a big string from your bow gone. Seb is very good in low-speed corners, and he's probably the master on the Pirelli tyres. It's bad news for the others that Pirelli are staying. Is there perhaps a deeper underlying problem to Hamilton's disappointing second half of the season? "I do think Lewis needs to find that consistent hunger he had back in the day," adds Webber. Lewis wanted to prove himself back then, and he did. Unlike Vettel, Hamilton's private life has been a blaze of headlines. "Someone once said they take Vettel out of a cupboard on a Thursday night and put him back on Sunday night," Webber says, smiling. Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel haven't always been mates. Lewis is different, yeah. It's all about getting the right balance. There's every chance Lewis could fight for the title next year. He's the right age, he has the right environment at Mercedes. Webber's career has flown past, he says, sipping from his second, giant-sized cappuccino. Only a Pound50,000 injection of cash from Australian rugby maverick David Campese, an old playing friend of Webber's dad, Alan, kept his career on track in 1997. From there, his grit eventually won him a drive at the Australian Grand Prix in 2002, when an astonishing fifth place for Aussie team owner Paul Stoddart provided the prize money to keep Minardi afloat. Being locals, Webber and Stoddart were invited to share the podium with race winner Michael Schumacher, in typical Aussie fashion. By mid-season Webber was recruited for 2003 by the Jaguar team, who later sold out to Red Bull. His performances in a poor race car attracted the attention of Frank Williams, who likened Webber's never-say-die approach as being similar to Alan Jones, who provided Williams' first world championship in 1980. Webber flew in those days on easyJet, unheard of by an F1 driver. "I have never looked at myself as being famous," Webber says. What is fame? Kim Kardashian? Give me a break! All I have done is drive a Formula One car on the limit, in all conditions. After an uneasy two years at Williams, his move to newcomers Red Bull in 2007, known in the early days as party central in the paddock, looked decidedly like the last roll of the dice. If so, he almost hit the jackpot. Mark Webber pilots his Red Bull Racing car around Abu Dhabi. Billionaire owner Dietrich Mateschitz may have later constructed the team around Vettel, who has clearly repaid the faith placed in him, but the Austrian was loyal to Webber. When the Australian broke his leg in a cycling accident during Webber's charity fund raiser in Tasmania in 2008, Mateschitz told him by phone as he lay in a hospital bed: "Mark, we will wait for you." Some people wonder why I stayed at Red Bull, after some of the issues we have had, but Dietrich was bloody good to me when I was flat on my back full of drugs. I never forgot that," Webber says. No Formula One driver has ever waited so long for his first grand prix victory - 130 races. Webber's moment of sweet triumph came at the German Grand Prix at the Nurburgring in 2009. "It was a massive moment," he says. It was so important to me that it wasn't a fluke. At one point, he called his team engineer on the radio to ask: "Is Seb stuck in traffic?" He was informed that was not the case. "Now, Seb's doing that with me!" he says, laughing at his own expense. A young Mark Webber in his Jaguar days. In all, Webber has nine wins; two of them at Monaco, and two of them at the British Grand Prix. With 213 Formula One races behind him, he has just two more remaining. "I'll miss the cars, and the camaraderie of guys like JB (Jenson Button)," says Webber, as he recounts tales of having a chat with drivers who have crossed him on the track, like Pastor Maldonado, Romain Grosjean and Finland's ice man, Kimi Raikkonen. I told Kimi I thought he must have been drinking vodka, he was weaving around that much on the road! Webber says. Kimi had a chat back, I recall. From next year, Webber will drive a Porsche in a new Le Mans sports car program. "Nothing's forever," he says. And as he shakes hands, he laughs as he sees a sign on a window sill in the coffee lounge. "The deadline for complaints was yesterday," it reads. "That's about right, mate!" says Webber, who will be sorely missed for his driving, and for being a straight-talking Aussie bloke who stood alone in the corporate world of today's Formula One.