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Formula One driver Mark Webber has revealed that he fell off his mountain bike days before the Japanese Grand Prix in October, and drove the final four races of the season with a fractured shoulder, according to the Daily Mail.
Webber took pain-killing injections to combat his discomfort at the crucial point of the season. Despite the Red Bull driver being in contention for the champion title for much of the year, he missed out on the accolade after a downturn in performance over the last races.
The revelation has come in Webber’s new book – Up Front: A season to remember’. The cycle fan had previously sustained a fractured leg after an accident on a road bike in a charity event in 2008.
Webber said: “On the Sunday morning before Suzuka, I got on a mountain bike for the first time since my accident in Tasmania at the end of 2008.
”I was riding with a great friend of mine. Suddenly, he crashed right in front of me and I had nowhere to go but straight through the ears of the horse! I suffered what they call a skier’s fracture to my right shoulder.
“Suzuka is a brutal track so it was a blessing that the Japanese weather gave me an enforced rest day on the Saturday (when qualifying was rained off), and a pre-race injection helped, too. ‘In the end, we got through the weekend all right.”
