Do we like them?

Do we like Mark Webber?

Our score: 7 out of 10. Nothing harmful turned up and there's a long public-service record, but I couldn't open the pages to dig deeper.

Mark Webber is the Queanbeyan-raised bloke who went from Formula One backmarker to Red Bull race winner and then Porsche sports-car driver. These days he's mostly known as the manager of McLaren's Oscar Piastri. I wasn't able to open the full career profiles this time, so treat this column as a lighter read than usual.

The 2026 story is about his job. Early in the year he stepped back from his trackside role with Piastri to concentrate on commercial work. Piastri played down any suggestion of a split, with coverage in February reporting that he denied any conflict and said Webber stays closely involved.

By July, Webber was in the news again for swatting away talk that Piastri was after a McLaren exit, calling it “nonsense”. That's a manager defending his driver, which is fair enough, and it's not a scandal. One report in May did accuse him of stirring speculation about Red Bull, but that's a quote from one critic and not a finding.

On the harm test, my searches found nothing: no campaigning against LGBTQ+ or trans people, no slide into conspiracy theories, and no climate or vaccine nonsense. I also found nothing about who he works with that raises a flag. That's an absence of evidence, not a ringing endorsement, and a statement from him on inclusion would have been nice to see.

The good stuff is real. He was made an Officer of the Order of Australia in the 2017 Australia Day honours, which recognised his motor sport career and his community work. Old team-order rows, like the 2013 Malaysia stoush with Sebastian Vettel, were racing fights between teammates and don't show anything about how he treats people.