Streets ahead
July 22, 2011
Always one for a timely debut - he set a record the first time he strapped himself into a Formula One cockpit - Sebastian Vettel took his first ever lead in an F1 world championship last November, on the very day the 2010 drivers' title was decided.
His victory in Abu Dhabi capped an improbable late-season charge, during which Vettel won three of the last four races, retiring from the lead with engine failure in the other just a few laps before the end.
This made Vettel, already the youngest pole-sitter and race winner in F1 history, the youngest champion the sport had ever seen - and considering the way he's sprinted out of the blocks in 2011, it's just a matter of time before he becomes the youngest double champion too. Vettel's form at the finish in 2010 was a beginning, not an end.
One at a time, gents
A season-opening win in Melbourne meant Vettel immediately retook the lead in the new, 2011 title hunt. He has built on that initial lead in every subsequent race weekend, reaching a level now tantalisingly close to deserving the title "unassailable." Here's how:
Sunday's German Grand Prix at the Nürburgring is the 10th round of the season; to date, Vettel has six wins and three second places to his name. In qualifying he has won pole position seven times and secured second on the grid twice.
At no meaningful session all season have any two drivers beaten Vettel.
The McLaren duo of Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button have both won one race ahead of him, while Ferrari's Fernando Alonso bested the German last time out at Silverstone. In qualifying only one man has ever gone faster than the champion; his Red Bull teammate Mark Webber has done so twice. But Webber has not beaten Vettel in any race this year.
These four men were all in the title hunt last year along with Vettel, and it's clear they all aspire to challenge him again - but not one of them has emerged as a serious contender. The champion has been taking the lion's share of all spoils, leaving the remaining four to fight over scraps, and the standings show it.
Vettel has 204 points from nine races and sits 80 points clear of everybody else. Meanwhile, only fifteen points separate Mark Webber (124) in second and Jenson Button (109) in fifth. It doesn't take a statistician to spot the odd one out among the top five drivers.
Leader of the pack
Sick of all this talk of anomalies? Looking for a constant? How's this? Sebastian Vettel has led at least one lap (actually, over a dozen laps) of every race in 2011.
Out of the 551 racing laps driven in total this season, Vettel has led 435. Fernando Alonso is next with 47 laps led, Jenson Button has 31, only three other drivers have ever led - none of them for as many as 20 laps. Four laps out of every five this year, Vettel's number one car has been in first position.
Having built such a sizable early cushion, Vettel need not necessarily lead any more laps at all en route to back-to-back championships - a feat only ever attained by eight F1 drivers. The only realistic impediment would seem to be reliability problems at this stage, and Vettel and his teammate Mark Webber are the only drivers this year to have finished all nine races.
If Vettel scores points and podium finishes consistently and if his four would-be contenders continue sharing the spoils amongst themselves, it's highly unlikely that any of them would ever catch him.
And it's frankly fair to assume - going by recent form - that Vettel will achieve far more than that, starting in front of his home crowd this weekend. That's certainly the young German's intention.
"One of the objectives a Formula One driver sets himself is to win his home race," Vettel, whose 16 career race wins have all come on foreign soil, said in the run-up to the race. "Of course, you always give 100 percent - but at a home race you're always more motivated, simply because you feel at home."
Author: Mark Hallam
Editor: Susan Houlton