When Sebastian Vettel took the British GP a fortnight ago, mastering the fast sweeps of Silverstone for a 51st win, he pulled level with Alain Prost on the all-time list. Only Michael Schumacher (91) and Lewis Hamilton (65) have more race victories.
The reality of this pecking order wouldn’t have been lost on the German: four years ago, it was Vettel, not Hamilton, who was expected to lead the pack chasing Schumacher’s record. At the end of the 2013 season, Vettel had 39 wins to Hamilton’s 22. But the Briton’s three titles in four years have altered matters.
Over the last two years, Ferrari has a found a way to challenge Mercedes’ hegemony, and the fight for a fifth drivers’ world championship between Vettel and Hamilton has grown tighter and more compelling.
For Hamilton, a fifth title will vindicate his already exalted status as the best all-round driver on the grid; for Vettel, it will represent something far more profound.
After four years of dominance at Red Bull (2010-13), Vettel was comprehensively beaten by upstart Daniel Ricciardo in the one year they were together (2014) before the German decided to jump ship to Ferrari.
It was a risky move: in 2014, Ferrari had its first winless campaign in two decades.
What Vettel was trying to do was emulate compatriot Michael Schumacher, who in 1996 had joined a struggling Ferrari that had not won a title in a decade. The success Schumacher and Ferrari had in their 11 years together will go down as one of the greatest turnarounds and partnerships in the history of not just F1 but world sport.
Despite Vettel’s four titles, there has always been the perception that he had it easy, thanks to the supremacy of the Red Bull car while ‘better’ drivers like Hamilton and Fernando Alonso were toiling in uncompetitive machines.
Though the Adrian Newey-designed Red Bull was indeed the benchmark when Vettel was rewriting record books, it does his achievements a great disservice to put them down to the brilliance of the car and not the driver. Besides, Hamilton has benefited himself from an even more dominant Mercedes.
One of the trademarks of Vettel’s days in Red Bull was his ability to extract the most from his car in qualifying. Like Schumacher, he was methodical, spending hours in the paddock after practice to get things just right. He set himself up to deliver that perfect lap on Saturday. He could then dominate Sunday from pole, using the clear air to maximise his vehicle’s potential and break free of the pursuing pack.
More importantly, he adapted his driving style to the cars and circuits of the time.
Between 2010 and ’13, teams spent a lot of time and resources on channelling the exhaust into the diffuser area — this ‘blowing’ produced rear downforce, pressing the car to the ground and giving it increased stability. Vettel took full advantage of it, devising an ingenious method of ‘cornering’ that shaved precious seconds.
It was around the time that F1 went to newer venues, which had fewer fast corners. It required a driver to be a little counterintuitive, and Vettel managed just that.
The German was able to attack these corners at higher speeds and use the sliding of the rear to his advantage during the turn-in. He was brave in getting on the gas during a slide, energising the exhausts and giving him crucial rear downforce which arrested the slide, while at the same time accelerating earlier out of the corner.
His teammate from that time, Mark Webber, conceded that Vettel was far superior in those corners with the ‘blown-diffuser’ cars until they were outlawed.
Sebastian Vettel celebrates winning the race on the podium with second placed Mercedes' Lewis Hamilton
While Hamilton’s aggressive style of driving is celebrated — he brakes later than most and still finds a way to control the car and exit smoothly — what Vettel managed in those four years was not any less impressive.
2011 brought another change with Pirelli entering the sport as the tyre supplier, replacing Bridgestone. It was tasked with providing tyres that had high degradation —all in a bid to spice up the show.
Vettel wasted no time in testing the tyres just days after winning his first title in 2010. He even took the effort to visit the tyre company’s factory to better understand the rubber. No surprise that he was quick to get his head around it while Webber was unable to unleash his potential on those fragile tyres.
A facet of Vettel’s driving that people questioned was his wheel-to-wheel ability. This was rarely tested in his early dominant years since he started from the front row and controlled the pace. But over the last few years at Ferrari, Vettel has managed to show how wrong this view is, pulling off manoeuvres like the key passes in China last year or the ones in France this year from the back of the grid.
So far in 2018, with four wins under his belt, Vettel has been the most complete driver, barring his first lap mistake in France when he hit Valtteri Bottas.
He has also been psychologically boosted by his victory over arch-rival Hamilton at the Briton’s home race, ending Ferrari’s seven-year wait for a win in Silverstone. And for the first time with the Prancing Horse, Vettel heads to his home race this weekend with a competitive car. The sound of the German anthem followed by the Italian around Hockenheim is a very real possibility, like it used to be in the early part of this century.
If Vettel can win his fifth title, bringing glory to Maranello after a decade (Ferrari’s last drivers’ title came in 2007, the constructors’ in 2008), he will be able to banish the aspersions cast on his first four titles at Red Bull and sit comfortably among the greats at the sport’s top table, where he already has a rightful chair.
