Webber talks 2015 Le Mans

Mark Webber finished second in the weekend’s Le Mans 24 Hour endurance race. The result in what was the 83rd running of the classic was a positive for the former F1 driver

In an interview after the punishing race with select Australian journalists, the sometimes prickly Aussie was all smiles: "Yeah, first finish, that was nice."

Maintaining concentration throughout the race is testing, says Webber, who almost got squirreled into a tricky situation while one of the Audi's was tailing him.

"Mentally I'm pretty tired. Yeah. It's repetitive.

"I nearly hit a squirrel this morning! I had an Audi behind me, and there was a cone of some sort – WAH! And then there's squirrels just going across the track down the Porsche Curves…" he laughs.

So did his heart rate spike at that moment?

"I wasn't worried about my heart rate, mate! It's gonna be all over if I clipped him, but he survived. It's a full on 24 hours. Real motosport, isn't it?” Webber told motoring.com.au

"But there's also the traffic and obviously there's a few guys out there who are on the edge, so you gotta keep an eye on them. The speed differences are massive," he said.

And was he happy with how he drove?

"It was pretty good. I was much happier with my second quadruple stint… I went through [the first quadruple stint] too conservatively," he admitted.

His team mate, New Zealand young gun Brendon Hartley, was penalised with a drive-through for overtaking under safety car conditions, but Webber says even without the go-slow it would have been hard to catch the leading Porsche piloted by a team including current F1 driver, Nico Hulkenberg.

"When the race is like it was, it's certainly not a help," he explained of the drive-through penalty.

"Ninety seconds a few years ago, you'd get it back. But now there are no free tokens – you lose the time. It's a fine line between the White House [Maison Blanche, one of Le Mans’ landmarks] and the shi*t house," he observed.

"Hey, obviously, I would've loved to have won. Timo [Bernhard] and Brendon have put a lot of work in but a 1-2 [team finish] in the second year back is pretty bloody impressive. Honestly, we have all put our shifts in here – we've all put a good shift in.

"Audi are tough b*stards to roll over and we cracked it. And that's been a decade [of Audi domination]. To rock them, to get them rocked, to get a couple on their chin early was hard, and they finally ran out of bullets, which was good," Webber said.

The 39 year-old Queanbeyan (NSW) born driver noted that the Porsche squad was much better prepared than in 2014, when the car expired with just two hours of racing left.

"Logistically, operationally, a third car? That was ballsy. As a team to say we're gonna spread our resources to a degree.

"Fernando [Alonso] will be kicking himself," chuckled Webber, no doubt sympathetic to the Spaniard's tribulations in F1, where his Honda-powered McLaren race car is one of the slowest and regularly gets lapped.

Asked if Fernando was hoping to be in that third Porsche 919 Hybrid race car for Le Mans, Webber laughed: "He was, yeah! We got Earl Bamber, so it was good. The old Fonz eh?!"

After a cracking drive in one of the toughest races in the world, his Porsche 919 LMP1 race car completing more than 5000km in 24 hours without a hitch, Webber smiled despite himself.

"It was just a bit of a dream day really," he said, noting that he's looking forward to coming back next year.

"And now I'm havin' a beer!" he grinned broadly.