He’s a four time World Champion. He’s won 39 races and is third on the list of drivers with the most pole positions in Formula 1 history. But, this season has rendered all of those statistics irrelevant. Sebastian Vettel is being upstaged. Such talk in 2013 would have been discarded as nonsense, but the rise of Daniel Ricciardo has given Vettel a team-mate that has the ability to not only beat him, but also challenge his position as Red Bull’s number one.
In a recent interview with Auto Bild Motorsport, Red Bull boss Christian Horner suggested that rule changes and reliability issues have ‘disrupted his [Vettel’s] flow’. So is this just a blip for the 27 year old? Or, is his sensational new team-mate Daniel Ricciardo simply too hot to handle at the moment?
The first port of call is this year’s set of F1 statistics, and they don’t make pleasant reading for Vettel. Ricciardo has a 6-1 advantage over Vettel in the intra-team battle, excluding Ricciardo’s disqualification from the Australian Grand Prix and races where one car retired. In addition, Ricciardo leads the way in the qualifying head-to-head as well, out-pacing Vettel seven times compared to the German’s four. Vettel’s pace has certainly been less impressive this year; after all he out-qualified former stable-mate Mark Webber 17-2 in 2013.
The Exhaustion of Winning
The pressure put on by Ricciardo has evidently ruffled Vettel’s feathers. For once, Vettel is the senior member of the team, so he doesn’t have a more experienced team-mate that he can aim to surpass. Ricciardo has finally obtained a race-winning seat, and his hunger appears to be far greater than Vettel’s at the moment. What do you do once you’ve proved that you’re one of the greatest? It’s an interesting scenario that in two cases (Webber/Vettel and Vettel/Ricciardo) the young charger has dominated the team and stolen the headlines.
This all suggests that fatigue is playing a role. After four championship winning years it’s possible that Vettel is simply exhausted, and while the addiction to winning is still there it isn’t easy to win five titles in a row by the age of 28. Therefore, it’s quite possible that Vettel would have out-performed Ricciardo if the pair drove together three years ago.
In addition, Vettel welcomed the birth of his first daughter in January this year. Whether the challenges of fatherhood are affecting his driving or not remains to be seen, but mentality and tiredness have certainly played a part in Vettel’s increasing inconsistency this year.
Slowly Adapting
Another clear factor why Vettel has struggled for pace this year is the change in regulations. After four years of success with the same set-up and management team around him it’s clear that 2014 provided an unwelcome change. Horner mentioned this week that “He is very sensitive to the behaviour of the car, especially when braking.” Adding: “He has lost part of his feeling for the car”.
Vettel’s ability to find perfection (and then some) was one of his major assets in his World Champion years. The new technology has been a shock to the system for teams and drivers that have experienced many years of successful development, and the demands of the new braking system appear to be slowing Vettel down in particular. Yet, it’s all a learning curve. Vettel has plenty of years left in his career to adapt to the new technology, and there are already signs of improvement. For example, he has averaged fifth on the grid in the last five races, and has been driving consistently in what was originally an unreliable Red Bull.
Essentially, Vettel is experiencing a transitional phase. Red Bull no longer has the technological advantage (that now lies with Mercedes), so Vettel has to experiment and see where he is before he can adapt to driving a car that is completely different to anything he has piloted before. The current RB10 doesn’t suit Vettel’s on-the-edge driving style; rather it is more geared up to Ricciardo’s calmer manner.
Although Ricciardo is winning the publicity battle, Vettel isn’t too far behind on the track. The calendar is approaching Vettel’s ‘domination period’ from last year, when he recorded nine consecutive race victories. Still, Ricciardo has him in check at the moment. He’s more popular. He’s faster on track. There is a worrying possibility that we have already seen the best of Sebastian Vettel.
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