It's not easy being a Formula One driver in this day and age. It's allthemore difficult when you're driving for a team that is constantly battling with financial hardships. In a rare and candid interview, Mark Webber talks to Will Gray about the chase for racing success as well as sponsors, about the hopes, the worries, the happy moments and the low points. Exclusive for Atlas F1

To Australian racer Mark Webber, Melbourne in March must seem like an age away. The sheer joy that exploded from the affable 25-year-old and his compatriot and equally effervescent Minardi team boss Paul Stoddart over their fifth place, on Webber's debut, in their hometown's season-opening race was the stuff Grand Prix legends are made of.

But how the time moves on. The honeymoon period is not yet over - Webber proved as much with his stunning performance at last weekend's Monaco Grand Prix - but the potentially great Antipodean pairing could already be heading for an enforced divorce because their very roots will not give them the support they need.

When Webber took the chequered flag for fifth in Melbourne he did it for himself, for the team, and for his country. The fans went wild, and he and Stoddart ended up on the podium celebrating a result that was as good as a victory for such a tiny team.

Of course, unlike Ferrari in Austria, there was no rap for a lack of podium protocol on that occasion, because it was good for the sport to show the little ones could upset the big boys every now and again - and it helped show the face of Minardi to a potentially prosperous world, as Formula One headed for tough times.

But, nearly three months down the line, there are still no new companies from the land down under, and Stoddart is calling for someone to come to his aid. The result at Albert Park should have opened the floodgates for big national companies to join the sponsorship bandwagon, but they have not, and Minardi, it is understood, may not last until the end of the season.

"I would have liked to bring in some more Aussie sponsors to help Paul out," says Webber, who only managed to entice long-term sponsors Fosters and Telstra from his country. "We've found nothing out of Australia, absolutely nothing. Not one cent at all. It's a shame."

Webber remains passive on the subject, however, insisting that the massive recent redundancies at the team's base in Ledbury - revealed, ironically, in Monaco's millionaire's paradise - will simply re-focus the team. Stoddart, he says, "is pretty optimistic" that things will turn around.

"It's Minardi. It's normal. It is always on the ropes," Webber continues. "That's not negative, it is just that it has always been that way. It looked a lot harder about three or four weeks ago, but now it looks better and there is hopefully some more money coming in. We don't know yet, but Paul is quietly optimistic. He is a fighter."

Stoddart has, indeed, fought hard to entice sponsors from all regions of the globe, and has enjoyed major success from the rejuvenating economy of Malaysia, with his other driver Alex Yoong providing the impetus for a country that has never before had a driver in Formula One.

Australia, on the other hand, has already had a World Champion in 1980 title holder Alan Jones. In some quarters Webber is rated just as highly, and the lack of financial support from their home country is still something that grates on Webber, even though he can understand that the Australian economy is not enticing heavy financing right now.

"It is big money, Formula One," Webber muses. "I mean, a million Australian dollars is £350,000 (English pounds) which is nothing. Ten million is £3 million (pounds), which is serious money - but ten million Aussie (dollars) can buy a lot of Utes!

"I am not going to sit here and bag them out, it's difficult to do that because with the Aussie dollar, it's just big money. It is just hard for the companies to get involved. I gave up a long time ago to try and find big sponsors out there, but I am happy with what I've got.

"We are still recovering from the Olympics (in 2000) a little bit as well. I mean, that was an awesome Olympics. Then we have cricket, (rugby) union...there is just a lot more bigger stuff going on down there. There are a lot of other bigger sports to follow, Olympians, swimming...but still, the support for us is absolutely phenomenal. Paul would be absolutely cruising if he had the support that the public want to give him."

Cruising he is certainly not, however. And nor is Webber. Both are trying as hard as they can to make the Minardi dream work, and Webber's performances on track are doing wonders for that. So much so that Stoddart believes his new charge is at least as good as the hotly-tipped talent Spaniard Fernando Alonso, who drove for Minardi last year before swapping with Webber and claiming the Renault test seat.

Webber is still under the wing of Renault boss Flavio Briatore, however, and in fact it is Renault, not Minardi, who pay his salary. Whether the fact that the phlegmatic Italian team chief is still steering his way through the complex politics of Formula One will be to his advantage or not remains to be seen, but he is confident he is doing enough to impress potential new bosses if he needs to move on.

"Renault are well and truly behind me," Webber says. "They're paying me, so that's something, and if we were sitting in Suzuka (at the end of the season) now and we had carried on the way we are, having a few good qualifying sessions and some strong races and so on, then I hope that someone would like to have me drive for them."

Not a one-season-wonder, then? Only time will tell. But Webber is desperate to make this season work so that, as he admits, someone will take notice. That, however, already happened. After setting an astonishing eighth fastest time around the tricky Monaco streets during the Thursday practice session, Webber was greeted by former driver and now Jaguar boss Niki Lauda - a simple "well done" spoke volumes.

To move to Minardi was a gamble. He just missed out on the Formula 3000 Championship last year, losing out to Briton Justin Wilson, but had already done a year of test driving with Benetton (which became Renault at the end of the year). Minardi basically presented him with an uphill struggle in an under-developed and under-funded car. But, in some ways, he sees it as something that can even help to impress, as Alonso proved last year.

"It is an advantage because people expect less," says Webber of having to perform for Minardi. "But it's got its ups and downs and it is also frustrating because, with the finances we have got, trying to go forward, trying to move into the teens (in qualifying) and things is difficult. That would be nice, but I don't want to be in the teens either, I want to be even further up."

The 'teens' aim has already been achieved. Several times. In fact, the impromptu meeting with Lauda in the Monaco paddock was somewhat eye opening, because the following day, in qualifying, Webber would once again outpace the highly-paid Eddie Irvine and the highly-rated Pedro de la Rosa at the wheel of the two Jaguar cars, to claim 19th spot on the grid.

But Webber, in his own words, was "nailing" the Monaco track on his first visit in a Formula One car and was "really, really pissed off" that he couldn't do more in qualifying. He won there last year, in a Formula 3000 car, and was confident he could surprise a few people. But the Sauber of Brazilian Felipe Massa got in the way.

"Normally we are happy to do the Jags, but I wasn't satisfied," he admits. "We could have done both BARs, Bernoldi...we had such a good chance to really, really do a lot more. The track was there and I was already six tenths up at the top of the hill because I nailed Ste Devote. No-one wants to hear excuses but it is really, really frustrating and it annoyed me that we could have put the Minardi where it shouldn't have been."

Webber's teammate Yoong, however, put his car exactly where everyone expected it would be - in one of the barriers around the steel tube streets. It was, perhaps, slightly surprising he qualified for the race at all. The Malaysian is struggling to perform and Webber has been left with no real benchmark to measure himself against.

The blunt truth is that Yoong brings in the money but struggles to perform on the track while Webber brings plenty of talent, but very little money. For Minardi it seems a good combination, but the Malaysian investors are, apparently, far from impressed by the best driver their country can offer.

The money is still coming in but Malaysia, like any country, wants to show they can compete with the best in the world. The government's title sponsorship, which aims to promote capital city Kuala Lumpur, is just part of the finances that Yoong brings in.

Magnum, the country's lottery company, is another backer who, you would presume, are keen for Yoong to prove his place in Formula One and there is a genuine concern that the 25-year-old driver, who failed to qualify for the San Marino Grand Prix three races ago, is struggling to compete.

Webber struggles to comment, but eventually admits: "He is (struggling), but there is no substitute for experience. Coming into Formula One you need to have some good experience. He is doing well, I think, with the experience he has got, but this is not a tea party out there - this is the pinnacle. It is very easy to look average if you are not on top of your game."

Webber is not struggling, but he has had some tough times since his astonishing debut in Melbourne and such highs now seem quite a distance away. Clearly boosted, then, by the home support, his 18th place in qualifying remains the best he has achieved so far this season. So too, of course, does his fifth place finish.

Since then, there have been two 21st places, just one place ahead of Yoong, one 20th and two 19th grid spots. Sure, he usually outpaces the Malaysian by more than a second per lap in both qualifying and race trim, but so he should. Perhaps it is time to step up a gear.

"I still think what I have done since Australia has been really good," he says. "It was always going to be less exciting, but we have had some good strong races for what we've got and things are going well. People are stopping and saying hello and people are talking about things, saying that I am doing okay. It is always difficult to judge what I am driving.

"Stepping up to the plate in qualifying is always a good challenge. It is something that, when the fuel comes out and the track goes like that in terms of fuel, you have got to really, really be on top of your game and judge what is going to be there when you get there.

"But the racing is pretty much what I had expected - racing's racing really. Austria was good because that is a track that sort of biases itself towards racing and getting a bit closer. I was having this scrap with Salo, which I thought was for position, the team told me it was for position, but he was trying to lap me!

"Because the cars are so much on the edge, braking really late and have so much grip, it is hard to go wheel-to-wheel. It's not like the days of Formula Ford. You would probably see more racing if we started with 220 kilos again, you know."

At the Austrian Grand Prix, Webber set a fastest race lap just six-tenths slower than the McLaren of David Coulthard and the Renault of Jenson Button. "We were smoking around there," he chuckles. Last weekend, in Monaco, his pace was also surprisingly strong, with his fastest lap just six tenths of a second slower than race winner Coulthard and significantly quicker than fourth-placed Jarno Trulli, of Renault.

Those performances have been a welcome boost after the disappointing events in Barcelona, at the Spanish Grand Prix, which saw Webber's Minardi team forced to withdraw from the race amid wing failure fears. The long faces as Stoddart, Webber and Yoong met the press to tell of their decision showed that it was a tough blow for everybody involved, but Webber, now, remains philosophical over the matter.

"It was the only decision to make. But it was just frustrating to come to the race and not compete. We don't just lop up and do our stuff, obviously. It was very tough to call, very tough for the whole team, and it was a shame. But if both cars finished 14th and 15th I don't think it would have (made a difference). It's hard to say."

Webber somewhat embarrassingly admits that the team had probably received more publicity from Stoddart's appearance as a commentator on television than they would have done by having the cars in the race. But that's politics. That's Formula One. Racing is only a small part of the show.

"It's probably a sniff more political than I had thought it would be, but I always knew it was very political. There are a few things that shock you every now and again, but when the stakes are high the politics can be high. They're all here to do the stuff, so it is tough.

"Very tough."