Eric Thompson: Deserved win for a good Aussie battler

Eric Thompson

Opinion

It did my heart good to watch Mark Webber win his maiden Formula One race, even though he's an Aussie. He'd have to be the last of the breed of drivers who made it to an F1 grid on talent, hard work, graft and determination.

These days, if you have a modicum of the above, but a bucket-load of cash, you'll get to drive an F1 car. Talent alone won't cut it any more.

To quote the movie Jerry Maguire, F1 teams are now yelling "Show me the money" before they put a driver in one of their hghi-tech paper darts.

Webber struggled to finance his motor racing career as far back as 1997 when racing in the British Formula Three championship. He was nearly forced to quit halfway through that season, only to be rescued by Aussie rugby star David Campese. The former winger stumped up his own money to keep Webber in the championship, where he went on to finish fourth.

Scott Dixon is another who could have missed motor racing glory. If it hadn't been for a bunch of his fellow New Zealanders raising the millions needed to get him into a decent team in the IRL, we may not have had the first Kiwi to win an Indy 500.

These are two examples of people close to home who had talent to burn but were short of a bob or two.

These days you only get to F1 if you're taken under the wing of a team while still in single figures, a la Lewis Hamilton. Or, if you have more money than the GDP of a small country, a la Jamie Alguersuari, you too can be the reserve driver for Red Bull.

Now that our own Brendon Hartley has decided to go back to actually racing motor cars rather than hanging over a pit wall, Red Bull would have looked at who could "show the money" and get him on board. However, before anyone starts beating their chest about Hartley being dumped, Red Bull would have easily invested more than a million euros in him, so it won't be wanting to abandon that investment.

Anyway, if you look at it clinically, why would you want to get into a dog of an F1 car that a four-time ChampCar champion can only just qualify on the back of the grid?

Staying with the money and F1 theme, has anyone noticed how Jenson Button and the Brawn team have gone off the boil? Even before next weekend's Hungarian Grand Prix, I'll put it out there that the team have, or are about to, run out of money. A car with no sponsorship may stand out on the grid but if there's no name on it, it's not doing anyone any favours.

Maybe Richard Branson could pony up a bit of money - he's into aeroplanes and F1 cars are just paper darts on wheels.