What is a guy like Mark Webber doing in Formula One? No less than 129 races have passed since his debut at the 2002 Australian Grand Prix and he has yet to spray champagne. Or claim pole position. Or set the fastest time in a race. At 32, he’s too old to be a boy racer. At 6ft 2in, he has always been too tall. There just isn’t enough room in those cars for all that excess baggage he carries; the morals, the wit and intelligence.

Who does he want to be, Martin Brundle or Michael Schumacher? How will he catch Jenson Button if he’s always in bed by 10pm? Did Eddie Irvine get where he is today by avoiding parties and dating the same woman for 13 years? No, it’s a mystery. How has Webber survived?

We join him, and his partner Ann Neal, on a glorious sunny afternoon at their Côte d’Azur home in the hills above Nice. The interview has entered its second hour and I am reminding them of an opinion he gave last year on Lewis Hamilton: “His career has gone off like a rocket ship, but it won’t always be like that. He’s young and he’s black, which makes him unique in this sport, but that’s got a shelf life. He won’t stop being black but it will stop being a novelty. And he’ll find that some of the column inches, maybe even this season, are totally negative and totally incorrect. That’s not easy to deal with.”

“That was impressive,” I say. “Where do you keep the crystal ball?”

“Do you want another one?” he smiles.

“Yeah.”

“There’s this absolute superstar of Australian sport called Ben Cousins,” he says. “He’s an AFL guy, a phenomenal athlete, but he went off the rails with cocaine and was all over the place for two years. We’re in Melbourne on the Thursday before the grand prix this year and it’s his first match back. A journalist asks me, ‘Any predictions on sport this weekend, mate?’ I said, ‘Yeah, Ben Cousins will pull a hamstring tonight.’ Guess what? He pulled a hamstring.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, well look into your crystal ball for me again and explain Jenson Button,” I demand. “Last year he was being lapped by Lewis Hamilton. This year it’s the reverse. What are we to make of this sport? How does Mark Webber explain it? Is it the driver or the car?”

He smiles and shakes his head. A long pause ensues.

“Yeah, it’s not easy mate,” he sighs.