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| Sebastian Vettel became Formula One's youngest triple world champion at the after a wet and wild Brazilian Grand Prix won by Jenson Button behind the safety car on Sunday proving to the world that the domination is |
| ot over yet |
He was called ‘Baby Schumi’ when Vettel made his entrée into the
Formula One scene but the German has proved that he is in a class of his own with his
third successive title at the age of just 25 and having needed just 101 grand prix races
to achieve the feat. The youngest triple champion the sport has ever seen, the Red Bull
driver is only the third, after the late Argentine Juan Manuel Fangio and Schumacher
himself, to win three championships in a row. The younger German is the only man, however,
to take his first three titles in consecutive years.
Vettel has always been a man in a hurry from the day he came into Formula One in 2007
and immediately became the youngest driver to score a point. He became the youngest grand
prix pole sitter, race winner and driver on the podium with Toro Rosso in 2008, the
youngest champion in 2010 and, unlike Schumacher, has a strong sense of Formula One
history.
In 2010, Vettel did not lead the championship until the moment when it really mattered,
after the final floodlit race in Abu Dhabi when he clawed back a 15-point deficit on
Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso. The following year, he wrapped up the title in Japan with
four races to spare. He ended that same season with a record 15 pole positions and 11 race
wins. The German has found it harder to assert himself this season with seven different
winners in the first seven races but Singapore in September proved the turning point, and
he went on to win four races in a row to take the lead from Alonso in South
Korea.
A carpenter’s son from Heppenheim, Vettel has given all his cars female names,
progressing from ‘Kate’ to ‘Kate’s Dirty Sister’,
‘Luscious Liz’, ‘Randy Mandy’ and last year’s ‘Kinky
Kylie’. This year’s model was simply ‘Abbey’, a name Vettel
insisted was not linked to his love of The Beatles album ‘Abbey Road’. Abbey
is also a familiar corner at Silverstone, the circuit nearest to Red Bull’s Milton
Keynes factory.
The final race, like much of the 2012 season, was all about Vettel and Alonso. For this
has been the Formula One season that has borrowed the fable of the tortoise and the hare
from the pages of Aesop and dramatized it for the stage, or the 20 rowdy stages that make
up the sport's schedule. Vettel claimed his title with just a three point lead over
Alonso. But with Ferrari and Alonso looking for redemption and the competition upping
their game, can Vettel manage a youngest four time world champion title? Only time will
tell.
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