As the F1 winter continues with the main story being the big shake up at Ferrari, all of it centres around one driver in particular, Sebastian Vettel. His career at Red Bull taught him a lot about the ups and downs of Formula One.
The first race that comes to mind is the Chinese GP in 2009. It was a race heavily effect by rain, which isn’t unusual for that particular race. After safety cars and delays in proceedings the race was finally able to get under way and the real mayhem started. Amongst the fantastic overtakes in the wet by the likes of Sebastian Vettel, Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button, there were spins for the likes of Fernando Alonso and crashes for Adrian Sutil and Jarno Trulli. However, when the chequered flag fell it was Vettel who managed to keep his head cool and keep his car on track to bring home the first win for Red Bull Racing. No one at that stage could have imagined what that win would kick-start and the fantastic run that Vettel was about to go on with a team which had just achieved its first ever win.
From joy to disappointment. Brazil 2009 saw Vettel lose out on his chance to win his first F1 drivers’ title and, although the season hadn’t gone completely to plan and the chances of him winning were slim, as Brawn and Jenson Button had had such a good season, it’s still not easy for any driver to take, especially one so young as he was at the time. Everyone knew he and Red Bull would come back fighting in 2010, but the winter was definitely a time of reflection for him as he looked to iron out the mistakes that cost him the previous year.
Coming into the climax of the 2010 season, Vettel was yet to lead the championship and looked to be a back-marker to the real fight between Mark Webber and Fernando Alonso; if he was to have any chance a rub of the green was needed, and that’s what happened, to an extent, in Korea.
The rain was torrential and after delayed starts and safety cars and not even knowing if the race was going to happen, it finally got under way and the first big incident to happen was Webber putting his car on the white line and spinning straight into Nico Rosberg, much to the dismay of his mechanics as it now put his title hopes on the line. What Red Bull were hoping for now was that Sebastian would win the race to keep some of his chances alive and get the crucial points for the constructors’ title, and for a long time that looked the case, as Vettel led the race comfortably until a few laps from the end. A spectacular engine failure saw Vettel drop and hand the race lead and crucial points to Alonso. Korea 2010: a race Red Bull will never want to revisit.
Vettel kept producing good results and getting points on the board, which left him in with a chance of winning the championship come the final race in Abu Dhabi, and he was desperate to avoid the heartache from a year ago; all he could do was win the race and hope the others tripped over themselves. That’s exactly what happened.
After an early safety car, where Vitaly Petrov and Nico Rosberg retired early and Robert Kubica started on the harder tyres, Webber soon felt his tyres start to degrade. He pitted earlier and Ferrari made the call to follow him in, but they soon realised that the people who stopped earlier wouldn’t be easy to get past, especially round the twisty Yas Marina circuit.
Vettel and Hamilton stayed out and got their tyres through the graining phase, so whilst he was pulling out in the lead, Alonso and Webber were stuck behind Petrov, who was putting in the drive of his life. Drawing out the agony of not knowing whether he’d done enough, Rocky waited for everyone to cross the line before he could tell Sebastian that he’d won his first title and was the youngest champion ever.
Another season which involved a lot of mistakes and lessons to be learnt but this time ended in utter elation. Nexti time, the lessons were learnt as in 2011 he dominated the field from the word going in all but a few races and wrapped up the title with a surprisingly poor, for the season he was having, third place at the Japanese GP.
Onto the 2012 season where once again things hadn’t started too well and it seemed Red Bull had lost some of their pace that led to two titles in the previous two years. A couple of wins and a couple of retirements meant things weren’t looking great in terms of winning the title for a third year in a row. The car, however, had always gone well round the Valencia street track and wins there in the past meant there was reason to be confident.
The confidence increased when Vettel put the car on pole and stormed away from the front, leading comfortably until another reliability problem saw the car retire due to alternator failure, which continued to plague the team throughout the season. The retirement handed another win to again title rival Fernando Alonso and this left Vettel 40 points behind going into the summer break. Who would have thought he would be able to overcome the deficit in the second half of the season?
This disaster spurred Sebastian on to win the third of his four consecutive titles, and has to be considered one of the most important races in his career.
‘What is happening in the heat of Valencia to these Formula One cars today?’ – David Croft, Valencia 2010.
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