Sebastian Vettel: A deserving Champion

Sebastian Vettel  is the 2012 Formula 1 world champion, and yes he thoroughly deserves it. There are many cases to be made for other drivers as to why they might deserve it more because they haven’t had the best car or they got taken out at races or their team elected to screw up their pit stops for an extra challenge.

But the fact is the guy with the most points wins and that means through all the different circumstances and challenges that have been presented to each driver every race, that driver with his team have dealt with and overcome those obstacles and utilised their package the best.

Over simplified it may be, but you can only deal with what you have, and if you get a good hand it’s about using it to the best of your ability.

Vettel in 2011 had a car that could dominate and he exploited that to its fullest potential, I don’t believe anyone else can push a perfect car to the extremes he can. In 2012 it was all change, gone were the exhaust blown diffusers, the trick device that Red Bull had previously designed their car around.

And yes at first it wasn’t brilliant for Vettel. Only one win and two other podiums from the first 10 races saw him getting frustrated, with slightly petulant radio calls to his engineers to help him out more giving him the appearance of a spoilt child, too used to the races falling for him.

In Malaysia his gesture to Narain Karthikeyan in the HRT was of someone not really accustomed to struggling as he suffered a puncture due to contact with the HRT’s front wing. He pulled over too quickly on the Indian, but he didn’t see it like that.

These things gave the impression he was not used to working for his results, which of course is utter rubbish, 2011 was far closer in the actual races than it appeared and let’s not forget 2010, but to the outside it could well have seemed here was someone not able to deal with being in a fight again.

His team mate Mark Webber was a factor once more, with the blown diffusers out of action Webber seemed more capable of extracting the performance from a car not working as expected. In fact the Australian seemed to be his 2010 self and had an extra win over Vettel as the season turned to the second half.

At this point Vettel lay 44 points behind Fernando Alonso, that’s nearly two race wins adrift. In that time he had taken two no scores, one of which was a certain victory in Valencia due to an alternator failure where he threw his gloves off in frustration. Despite this he remained calm, he has complete trust in his team, and they paid him back.

In the next 10 races he scored 7 podiums including 4 wins. The thing is despite the Red Bull not being up to scratch at the start, particularly in qualifying it still had great race pace and Vettel still got results out of it to leave him in contention. Alonso was always worried about the threat Vettel posed once the Red Bull could get back it’s qualifying pace.

And once it did, once the rear end was sorted and mimicked the blown diffuser concept (although not to the same effect), Vettel extrapolated as much speed as could be had. Four consecutive wins from Singapore to India, with the final three the very definition of Red Bull’s race plan. Qualify at the front, get a gap to nullify the DRS zone and control the race.

It’s what Vettel does best. Unlike Webber who faded a little, Vettel can extract the maximum speed when the car calls for a driving style that will access this speed, changing his style to suit the car.

These were impressive drives, but perhaps what will be remembered is that he didn’t just clear off in the three races that followed. He still had to fight hard for this title, especially against someone like Alonso. 

Problems and circumstances meant he had to charge through the field on two occasions. Vettel is more than capable of fighting with the best of them and not just winning from the front.

In Abu Dhabi, in truth I thought he looked clumsy at first, clipping Bruno Senna then nearly losing control behind the safety car, but still from last to third place is a good day in anyone’s book. And the calmness and assured overtaking he displayed as he fought back from near disaster in Brazil as he was spun to the back of the field was a drive truly worthy of a world champion.

So yes, Alonso may not have had the best car, but for a long time in the middle portion of the season particularly it was easily a podium capable car, but Vettel didn’t have the fastest car either for a fair portion of the season and he too was able to grind out the results when needed. McLaren had the best car overall, they just screwed up a fair few times.

You can only play the hand you’re dealt with, Alonso played his to perfection, but so did Vettel, it just so happens Vettel had an ace and he used it. You get what you’re given sometimes and it’s up to you to maximise those opportunities, which he did.

You can’t argue with someone who has had the strength to fight a title winning campaign in three consecutive seasons, only the third man after Fangio and Schumacher to achieve it, and at only 25 years old too, there’s more to come. He’s a thoroughly deserving champion.

all photo's taken from autosport.com