Mark Webber auditions to be The Grand Tour’s racing driver

MARK Webber must be getting a little bored in his racing retirement, as he’s been trying out for a new gig.

The Grand Tour – Jeremy Clarkson, James May, and Richard Hammond’s current show – recently fired the professional driver it employed in season one. With a vacancy to fill, the trio have been taking auditions to find a replacement.

Australia’s Best Chin of 2005 put his hand up, took a trip out to the English countryside, and cut some laps of the Eboladrome.

Voted ‘most likely to crash a Mercedes-Benz CLR into the French forest’, at his high school graduation, Webber is also one of Australia’s greatest motoring exports, having won the World Endurance Championship in 2015, and claimed victory at nine F1 Grands Prix from 215 starts.

Webber brought Porsche’s fearsome 911 GT2 RS along for his audition, and the guys from The Grand Tour handed over the keys to a Mercedes-AMG GT R for a lap.

While the boy from Queanbeyan has spent plenty of time behind the wheel of Porsches, evidently he hasn’t quite nailed the techniques needed for putting down a fast lap in another manufacturer’s car.

It might have something to do with his current side gig, where he works as a brand ambassador and test driver for Porsche.

But we might be reading too far into the situation…