Скрытый текст
Deconstructing Sebastian Vettel
How does Sebastian Vettel fare against Formula 1's greatest stars from the past? It may be too early to know, but Edd Straw explains why the German is the greatest 23-year-old that the sport has ever known
By Edd StrawAUTOSPORT F1 editor
Sebastian Vettel's 2011 season has been truly astonishing, with his five wins from seven races adding up to a monstrous 60-point championship lead over Jenson Button. That's a whopping 83 points more than the German had at the same point last year. And had the Chinese and Canadian Grands Prix been respectively four and one lap shorter, he would have a 100 per cent record and a share in Michael Schumacher and Alberto Ascari's record for consecutive world championship race wins.
He's already a world champion and has one outstretched fingertip in contact with a second drivers' crown. To that must be added the caveat that with 11 races to go a hell of a lot can, and will, happen but it has still been an impressive campaign.
Yet still, there are some continuing to run him down, suggesting that he has lucked into the best car and isn't yet a top-class grand prix driver. Others would argue that he's already well along the way to becoming an all-time great.
Such assessments are inevitably subjective, but it is possible to create a kind of greatness checklist to get some idea of how Vettel would be regarded if he made a shock decision to quit and flounced off to NASCAR with 69 starts, 15 wins and the 2010 world championship to his name.
RECORD-BREAKING
It is way too early for Vettel to challenge any of the major outright records, but he has an impressive collection of 'youngest ever' entries in the history books.
His Monza win in 2008 made him, at 21 years and 73 days, the youngest to win a world championship race. At 23 years and 134 days, he became the youngest world champion last year. He is also the youngest driver to take a pole position, finish on the podium, score a point, drive on a grand prix weekend and lead a grand prix.
In terms of overall records, his 21 pole positions puts him 10th in the all-time list, although he is still nine victories away from bumping Nelson Piquet out of the top 10 in terms of wins.
Verdict: Achieving so much, so early, is remarkable and he could easily have another dozen years or more to build on his records.
ONE-LAP WONDER
You can make a compelling case that Vettel is the heir to Ayrton Senna as one of F1's great qualifiers. Only a KERS problem in Spain has denied him a clean sweep of pole positions this season and his ability to deliver an on-the-edge lap when it really counts is uncanny.
The signs were there several years ago. His lap to put his Toro Rosso on pole at Monza in 2008 in wet conditions heralded his arrival in F1, but it was his next pole position that set the mould. A driveshaft boot problem meant that he had only one run during the three qualifying segments in China 2009, but he delivered each time without a safety net.
Since then, even Mark Webber, no slouch over a single lap has had to admit that Vettel's ability to pull a lap out of the bag is impressive. That he has beaten so competitive a team-mate in equal machinery overcomes the argument that the German's car advantage devalues his pole record.
Verdict: This box has been emphatically ticked, for qualifying is probably the strongest weapon in Vettel's armoury.
OVERTAKING
The first thing that leaps to mind is Vettel losing it at the approach to the chicane at Spa last year and clattering into Jenson Button. He later suggested that he did so while looking to overtake, adding to the feeling that Vettel is not as in control while running down the order as he is while leading from the front.
In an interview with AUTOSPORT than ran in the build-up to the Spanish Grand Prix, Mark Webber highlighted as Vettel's weakness "dealing with unexpected plan changes during a grand prix." It's a fair criticism, and inevitably Turkey 2010, when Vettel edged over on an unyielding Webber while trying to take the lead, springs to mind.
Vettel has also won 11 of his 15 races from pole position, with his other victories coming from second four times and third once. There are no 'burn from the stern' victories for Vettel. But to put that into context, all of Hamilton's wins have come from the top four on the grid, and even Fernando Alonso only has a couple from the third row on his CV (disregarding Singapore 2008, for obvious reasons). It's also important to note that Vettel has only twice started lower than third since the start of 2010, at Monza and Spa last year, both tracks where the Red Bull-Renault was not a contender.
There have also been some impressive passes this year after pitstops. He dispatched Button in Melbourne, while he took three cars, Button again, Rosberg and Massa, during his out-lap (plus a corner) in Barcelona. But these were executed with the advantage of fresh rubber, making them minor victories rather than major ones.
Verdict: Vettel still has some work to do here, but short of deliberately qualifying down the order it could be a while before he is in a position to produce some more evidence!
WINNING AGAINST THE ODDS
Fourteen of Vettel's 15 victories have come in the best car, no question. There's nothing wrong with winning race after race in the best car. After all, plenty of good drivers have struggled to deliver once they get into genuine frontrunning machinery. But it's unlikely victories that get the pulses racing.
While Vettel has not been cursed with driving a shed like the 1996 Ferrari that Schumacher dragged to three wins in 1996, he does have one stunning performance on his CV that many seem to have forgotten. In September 2008, he dominated the Italian Grand Prix in wet/dry conditions.
This was no fluke, it was a genuine against-the-odds victory in a race that everyone expected Heikki Kovalainen, in the faster McLaren, to win from second on the grid. Granted, the Toro Rosso was a Red Bull design, but this was before Red Bull had broken into the big-time and despite having a power advantage compared to the Renault from its Ferrari engine, the STR was not a winning car.
In qualifying, Vettel was nine tenths faster than team-mate Sebastien Bourdais, a quick driver made to look third-rate by the German's genius, and save for a moment at the first chicane, he never put a foot wrong.
This was a wet weather victory every bit the equal of Senna's victory at Donington Park in 1993 or Estoril in 1985.
Verdict: It would be fascinating to see how Vettel fares in the second, third or fourth best car. He's going to be around long enough for that to happen one day, but until then his STR performances give him a qualified pass in this category.
UNDER PRESSURE
Harking back to Webber's point about Vettel not being at his best when things go wrong, there are suggestions that the German is much more comfortable 10 seconds up the road and controlling the race than with a rival breathing down his neck.
Setting aside the fact that this likely applies to every racing driver ever to have competed, what happened on the last lap of the Canadian Grand Prix added fuel to this particular fire. Desperate to get to the DRS detection zone over a second clear of the charging Button, Vettel made a mistake, locked the rears and ran off the track, handing the McLaren man victory.
This has to go down as a mistake under pressure, albeit mitigated by the unusual circumstances that had Button been within DRS range a pass would have been close to guaranteed.
But looking at the whole picture, there are other races this year that show Vettel in a more positive light in such circumstances. In Barcelona, he absorbed intense pressure from Hamilton late on, and his driving on past-their-best tyres to keep Alonso back in Monaco was textbook defensive stuff.
Much of this reputation was built last season, when during the middle of the year there were a few errors while Vettel attempted to assert himself over Webber. Only once he had dropped well off the championship lead did it start to come naturally and his run of success late in the season duly delivered the championship.
Verdict: There is not the evidence to condemn him as flaky, but there is also not enough to say that he is rock solid in this area. The jury is out.
CONSISTENCY
The best drivers deliver year in, year out and Vettel has certainly achieved this.
He has won races in each of the past four seasons and is the only driver to have a 100 per cent record of making Q3 since the start of last season. That kind of consistency will make him very difficult to beat in this year's world championship.
There have also been very few mistakes. Aside from his Canada moment, his two big mistakes this season have come at the perfect time, hitting the wall during Friday morning practice in Turkey and Canada.
Right now, he is on a run of nine consecutive podium finishes, stretching back to Brazil last year. Only Fernando Alonso (Turkey 2005-Canada 2006) and Michael Schumacher's absurd 19-race stretch (USA 2001-Japan 2002) eclipse that in the history of the world championship.
In terms of individual races, his knack of controlling from the front comes from consistent, error-free runs, which have been central to that run of success.
Verdict: It's hard to fault Vettel's consistency, a weapon that should allow him to close out this year's world championship even if the off-throttle blown diffuser ban drops Red Bull into the clutches of the likes of McLaren and Ferrari.
MARK OF GENIUS
Assessing the above categories is largely a case of looking back over Vettel's F1 career and looking at the numbers and flashpoints. But what of the intangible?
As the recent Senna movie shows, a great driver is about more than just success. A great driver is about having a very rare character, an ability to make those working with you realise that you are their guy and that you will deliver. An ability to have that extra one per cent in every area that makes otherwise outstanding drivers look mediocre in comparison to greatness.
Shortly after Vettel's victory in the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, I wandered down to the Toro Rosso garage to find the team's technical director, Giorgio Ascanelli. Senna's race engineer at McLaren in 1992 and 1993, the Italian is a great student of race drivers. Perhaps better than anyone in the paddock, he is able to judge those who cross the line into greatness.
As Vettel celebrated his sensational triumph, Ascanelli said simply: "I am a very lucky man, because at the start of my career and now the end I have been touched by perfection." He was referring to Senna and Vettel, who he ran at STR in 2007-2008. Coming from a man not prone to making such statements, that was a hell of an endorsement.
While Vettel climbed the ranks, you regularly heard those kinds of things as he worked with tipping him for greatness. There was a buzz about him matched only by Lewis Hamilton in recent times.
Verdict: While Vettel has yet to convince some of the watching world, those who work closely with him recognise the mark of greatness.
NUMBER ONE
Vettel has been backed to the hilt by Red Bull since he took his first steps in car racing in Formula BMW. Even back then, it was clear that drive development programme boss Helmut Marko, who one team insider has described as having a "paternal" relationship with his charge, was pushing for him to have the best of everything.
Inevitably, Vettel's status as Red Bull's anointed one removes much of the romance from his rise to the top. But he had to deliver at every level, and he did so despite being beaten to the F3 Euro Series crown by ASM team-mate Paul di Resta. Just like Lewis Hamilton, it is churlish of those who complain about talents being wasted through a lack of funding to turn around and accuse those greats-in-the-making who do have support of having a silver spoon. After all, without such patronage, Vettel and Hamilton would never have made it to F1.
Since reaching F1, Vettel has won for the former Minardi team and clinched a world championship that he was counted out off after his engine failure in the Korean Grand Prix. For all of the complaints about the energy drinks company favouring Vettel, the German has had to succeed against a very strong team-mate in Webber and under enormous pressure every step of the way. He certainly didn't have Eddie Irvine or Rubens Barrichello alongside him cast as benign back-up.
Verdict: Vettel has always had the right people on his side, but he earned that support through ability. There has been no Webber-esque fight against the odds to make F1, but it's hard to fault Vettel for climbing to the top of F1 through a combination of speed, hard work and determination.
IN CONCLUSION
To answer the question posed earlier, where would Vettel stand in the pantheon if he stopped tomorrow?
You could make a strong case for him being in what might be characterised as the "second tier" of greats already. That he is not yet qualified for the top tier inhabited by the Sennas, the Fangios, the Clarks and the Schumacher is likely only a question of time, provided that as he matures he can answer the few question marks that hang over him.
Sure, there are still some chinks in the armour and some boxes to tick, but surely he is the greatest 23-year-old that the sport has ever seen? After all, the argument that he has lucked into his success is starting to wear a little thin.