Why Am I Retiring From Motorsports? — Mark Webber Explains

The World Endurance Championship driver announced his retirement last month. He said this current campaign will be the last of his motorsport career. This will bring an end to his three-year stint with Porsche in WEC.

While announcing the retirement at Fuji, he recalled the incident, "The Brazil crash was horrible for Ann, my wife; that was a really hard moment for her."

"I was very lucky in Brazil, it was an enormous impact. And it was the longest time I'd ever taken to recover from a crash. That was an education, to say the least. And then you see Brendon in Silverstone... that's part of the racing. That will always be there.

"And in fact sometimes I've been in the car in the last while, and I've said - 'why am I in the car?' And when you ask yourself that question, it's time to stop. On race weekends, a bit more often I think 'I'd rather be somewhere else'. That's not good."

He also said that he has no regrets about never winning the Le Mans 24 Hours. In 1999, he suffered two major crashes while driving the Mercedes CLR.

"The 1999 race was one of the hardest points of my career to get over. I just didn't love the whole two-week experience, to be honest," he said.

"Every year, going there 10 days before the race starts... you think 'God, let's just get the race going.' Maybe the race and I didn't love each other. Le Mans this year was exceptional for me in terms of performance. It was clarification that I did everything I could. I was pretty much the fastest guy there for Porsche.

"You can do it for five more years, have a technical failure, your teammate crashes... that's the race. If I didn't have my F1 results, it might be a bit different. But I'm comfortable with what I did with Porsche, and part of me has won Le Mans because I helped developed the car [that took wins in 2015 and 2016]."