Tonight:
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Mark Webber is wracked with guilt. As it stands, life could not be much better for Red Bull's Australian racing driver. No one has won more races than him this season and, although he is not leading the world championship, he is just 21 points behind Lewis Hamilton.
Very much the thinking man of the Formula One racing drivers, he is plagued by bigger worries than whether he will end up on the top of the pile come the season's finish.
“I had a mate who's just broken his neck, which is obviously a massive life-changing injury and I want to help these guys,” said Webber.
“I'm doing what I enjoy doing and I constantly think about people who don't have that. It sucks and that's something I feel guilty about a lot.”
Webber is the most engaging of all the F1 drivers. While his peers dwell on blown diffusers and tyre degradation, the 33-year-old can turn his hand to any topic. Our interview starts with Webber having just finished a previous question-and-answer session.
“They asked me which celebrity I'd like to sleep with,” he reveals to his partner Ann, who is sitting next to him. “And so I went for Pink,” he says with a heavy dose of sarcasm.
The conversation moves straight on to cricket with England in the midst of turning around their fortunes in the First Test against Pakistan. Despite having lived in England for nearly 12 years, his adoptive countrymen are still “the Poms”.
When it's put to him that he has a lot more to say than a lot of F1 peers, he credits his father and Ann.
“Growing up, dad always had the news on, so it has always seemed normal to me,” he said. “I wouldn't say I'm a bloody cultured bloke — far from it — it's just I have some other interests.
“Ann's influence has a lot to do with that. We try to have some decent discussions around the table at home. We try not to talk motor racing all the time. For example, I have an interest in the MOD and the situation in Afghanistan and you end up pulling your hair out with some of that stuff.”
Webber goes into Sunday's Hungarian Grand Prix confident of adding to his victories already this season in Spain, Monaco and Great Britain.
He believes the engine gremlins which curtailed his chances in Germany last weekend are a thing of the past and he is once more looking forward to doing battle with team-mate Sebastian Vettel — who was fastest in first practice this morning, finishing 0.130sec ahead of the Aussie — as well as the Ferraris and McLarens.
For once, Webber has not been inundated with questions about his and Vettel's relationship, with the pitlane focus heavily on Ferrari and their team orders which gifted Fernando Alonso victory at Hockenheim.
But Webber shrugs off the suggestion that the Ferrari squabbles could help his cause. “I don't think there are any problems at Ferrari,” he said.
“I don't see anything that will benefit us. As for the team orders, that is difficult. It's been going on for 40 years and will continue in the future.”
The chances are that Webber will find his way back to the front of the grid in qualifying tomorrow — the race in Germany was the first time since the season opener in Bahrain that he has not qualified in the top two.
Ominously for his rivals, adversity — such as the engine problems that befell him last Sunday — bring out the best in him. “I don't know what it is but I get bored very, very fast,” he said. “When I won two in a row, it wasn't that I didn't want to win a third, it's just I sort of expected something to go wrong as it usually does.
“But I like the adversity and I like challenging myself, asking questions of myself. I try to put myself in scenarios with other sportsmen — normally ending up way out of my depth — to see how I end up and that's always a great experience.”
The perception now is that Webber is at the peak of his career, although the Buckinghamshire-based racer said: “It shows how fickle things can be and, while I'm on the up at the moment, that can just go like that. I think I'm probably the same driver, it's just that the goals have changed.
“I arrived here in Budapest thinking about the win like every race this season. It's not that I'm a better driver, the only real change is the composure. That happens with experience.”
As for what's left to achieve, the obvious one is the world title. Webber, who turns 34 at the next race in Spa next month, believes he is a prime candidate to succeed Jenson Button. His other goals have changed. He had once dreamed of climbing Everest but admits mountaineering's not for him — “my hands just get too bloody cold”.
Instead, he is mulling over paddling between Australia and New Zealand once he retires, a charity fundraiser that one suspects might mean as much to Webber as being world champion.
“Being able to help other people, that's the real motivation in life,” he said. “Not for brownie points, just to, well, do something.”
