If there was still a group of F1 fans who were deluded that Sebastian Vettel wasn’t the real thing, perhaps the last nine races have finally penetrated their brittle armour.
In becoming quadruple world champion the German Red Bull driver has become the youngest ever driver to do so and only the fourth – after Juan-Manuel Fangio, Alain Prost and Michael Schumacher – to win more than three titles. Along with his growing hitlist of all-time records, on Sunday he became the first driver to score nine consecutive victories in a single season (Alberto Ascari won nine in a row but over two seasons in 1952 and 1953).
After a closely contested start to the season with several drivers in contention, Vettel’s victory in Belgium on August 25 opened the floodgates to what became a one-sided 2013 title triumph.
Add that to Vettel’s 13 wins this year, a single-season record he shares with Michael Schumacher, along with a total career tally of 39 Grand Prix wins and 45 pole positions, and Vettel’s trophy cabinet is bursting at the seams.
STIFF COMPETITION
Perhaps the most impressive part is that he set these records against a quality field of drivers that at times included a record number of five world champions: Fernando Alonso, Jenson Button, Lewis Hamilton, Kimi Raikkonen and Michael Schumacher.
And yet, for some reason there are still those reluctant to regard Vettel as one of the all-time greats, as evidenced by the boos he’s received on a number of race podiums this year.
He has the best car, his detractors argue, saying they will reserve judgment on his greatness until they see him winning in anything but a Red Bull. But their logic is shaky.
That he’s had Adrian Newey’s brilliantly designed machine at his disposal has certainly been very instrumental in Vettel’s success, but world champions, with very few (and debatable) exceptions have always won the title at the wheel of the best car. Why should Vettel be singled out for belittlement because of it? And the fact remains that only one driver has brought that Red Bull to those heights. Mark Webber has failed to win a single race in the same car this season, and in the four years that his team-mate won the title, the highest the Australian has finished in the rankings is third.
IT’S NOT JUST THE CAR
As for the claim that Vettel can only win in a Red Bull, the naysayers are reminded that he won the 2008 Italian Grand Prix at Monza from pole position in a midfield-running Toro Rosso. It was a devastatingly good drive in the wet that went a long way to earning him a seat at Red Bull who, lest we forget, had not yet won a race before Vettel joined.
So why is it that Vettel hasn’t been able to win hearts and minds as quickly as he’s racked up the records? After all, he’s friendly and articulate in interviews, and gracious in (admittedly rare) defeat. He’s also taken to performing doughnuts after winning races, in defiance of F1’s rigid rules against having fun.
He’s thrown the occasional tantrum over the radio in the heat of battle (he’s human after all), but no more than other drivers, although the trademark lifting of the index finger to celebrate his pole positions and victories seems to irritate some people.
Michael Schumacher, who won seven titles, also wasn’t universally admired but that was different as his controversial career was pockmarked by dirty deeds such as deliberately crashing into rivals Damon Hill and Jacques Villeneuve in separate title-deciding races, and in 2006 spinning his Ferrari in the closing seconds of Monaco qualifying to block the track and prevent his rivals setting quicker laptimes.
NICE GUYS CAN WIN
In contrast Vettel is one of the cleanest drivers around, and in a sport where it’s oft-quoted that nice guys finish last his career has been remarkably short of on-track controversies. Yet he has elicited more boos than Schumacher ever did.
Yes, Vettel sullied his nice-guy reputation in this year’s Malaysian Grand Prix incident by disregarding team orders to “steal” the race from Webber. But the transgression seems minor compared to the litany of dirty tricks in F1’s annals, so how did it make him the devil incarnate in the eyes of some detractors?
Admittedly many race watchers don’t like seeing such dominance and would prefer a closer contest, but that doesn’t account for the boos. After all, Usain Bolt doesn’t get jeered for always winning. That leaves us with the conclusion that the boos came from disgruntled fans of other drivers who don’t like to see their heroes being beaten.
Another argument trotted out by the anti-Vettel brigade is that he’s had much better luck than his team mate, and it’s always Webber at the receiving end of mechanical gremlins. Wrong again. Although Webber has admittedly had the lion’s share of misfortune in 2013, in their five seasons together at Red Bull both drivers have been afflicted by an equal number of mechanical issues, 33 each.
ONE OF THE TRUE GREATS
Adrian Newey, who has worked with legends like Ayrton Senna, Alain Prost and Nigel Mansell, when recently asked where he would rank Vettel, responded: “It would be unfair to go into rankings – to put one above the other – but what I would say is that Seb, without question, is one of the true greats.
“Of the great drivers I have been lucky enough to work with, what they all tended to have in common is intelligence. They all have the ability to drive the car and have the spare mental capacity to understand what they are doing when they drive the car, and to have great recall when they get out of the car – they can play back in their own minds what they’ve just experienced and combine that with a great work ethic in the evening in terms of talking to the engineers,” said Newey.
Sociologist C Wright Mills wrote that “truth is the perception of discordant experience pragmatically adjusted to suit a particular purpose, and for the time being”.
As much as Vettel’s detractors would like to adjust facts to suit their particular purposes, some truths are immutable. Whether you like him or not, Sebastian Vettel is a sportsman at the top of his game. He’s a four-time F1 world champion, he did it in a great car, he beat the best drivers of his generation, and he deserved every Champagne-spraying moment of it. -Mercury Motoring
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