Red Bull driver Sebastian Vettel of Germany holds his trophy aloft after winning the Indian Formula One Grand Prix and his fourth straight F1 world championship at the Buddh International Circuit in Noida, India, Sunday, Oct. 27, 2013.Mark Baker/The Associated Press
He has an infectious smile and wicked sense of humour, and he gives his cars names like Kinky Kylie, Hungry Heidi, Luscious Liz. His steely blue eyes glitter with mischief when he inevitably finds a way to talk about man parts during interviews or press conferences.
He's also spent the past four years rewriting the Formula One record book, becoming the youngest driver to achieve success in the history of the sport.
Meet Red Bull Racing's 26-year-old phenom Sebastian Vettel, the youngest driver in F1 history to score a point, take a pole, stand on a podium, win a race, and bring home a first, second, third and now a fourth world championship.
And after dominating the 2013 season and sealing a fourth consecutive world title on Sunday in India, the brash German just might now be F1's youngest-ever legend.
Although he easily has a decade or more to go in his F1 career, there's no doubt that Vettel's name isn't out of place in the same sentence as the legendary drivers who have won four world titles: seven time world champion Michael Schumacher (1994, 1995, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004) Juan Manuel Fangio (1951, 1954, 1955, 1956, 1957), and Alain Prost (1985, 1986, 1989, 1993).
Being part of that group – let alone being called a legend after just his seventh full F1 season – might take some time to digest.
"To win four titles, I don't know, it's just a big number, you know?" said Vettel, following his dominant win in Sunday's Indian Grand Prix that clinched the 2013 F1 and making him the first driver to win his first four world championships consecutively.
"To join people like that: Michael, Fangio, Prost is very difficult to put into perspective. I'm way too young to understand what it means. I might be 60 one day, maybe then I will understand but nobody cares any more. I care, it's difficult to realize something that nobody can take away from you, basically."
While he's already amassed an impressive haul, it's difficult to imagine Vettel will stop there. Many compare him to Schumacher – he was dubbed "Baby Schumi" years ago – and it's obvious they share many traits, among then being fast, ruthless and driven to win – sometimes at all costs. Like Schumacher, Vettel also works hard off the track, often staying at the track late with his engineers and mechanics as they prepare his car for grands prix.
Coincidentally, they both also attracted the wrath of fans due to their lust for victory. More than a decade ago, Schumacher got skewered when team orders forced his teammate Rubens Barrichello to pull aside in the 2002 Austrian Grand Prix and let the German take the chequered flag. Early this year, Vettel saw the sharp end of criticism after disobeying team orders and passing his teammate Mark Webber for the win earlier in Malaysia.
That transgression, combined with his constant winning, caused some fans to turn on Vettel, with some even booing him on the podium after victories in Italy and Singapore in September.
The harsh treatment also showed Vettel's sensitive side.
"No, I'm not – I don't know the word, nachtragend (hold a grudge) – I don't blame people," Vettel said.
"At the time it hurts, as I said, not to get the reception that you expect, but at the same time, I think I'm clever enough to understand why they do it. I'm not blaming them. Maybe if I would be a fan of McLaren, Ferrari, whatever, one of the traditional teams, I wouldn't like it if the same kind of guys, same team wins again and again."
He also ran into some trouble with the other teams this year after claiming the others don't work hard enough, saying that his team would still be at the track working while opposing engineers were at their hotels hanging their testicles in the pool. It wasn't the first time Vettel spoke about his or others male anatomy and, if past remarks are any evidence, it certainly won't be the last.
Strangely, there are also some who chalk up Vettel's success to his car, which admittedly has been the class of the field for the past few seasons. Those who do so forget that this is typical in F1, with one team using their earned knowledge to build a title-winning car.
The cold reality is that the only driver to take a title in the past 25 years while clearly not having the best car at his disposal was Prost in 1986. That year, the Williams of 1992 world champion Nigel Mansell and three-time F1 title winner Nelson Piquet drove rings around the field, taking nine of 16 wins, but was thwarted for the title when Prost snuck up the middle in his McLaren to capture an unlikely crown. Apart from 1986, it's tough to identify a world champion who captured the crown in a markedly inferior car. It would also be difficult to find anyone who would say three-time world champion Ayrton Senna wasn't a great driver and an F1 legend, even though all his titles came at the wheel of pretty impressive McLarens, including a 1988 version that he and his teammate Prost drove to victory in 15 of 16 races.
The bottom line is the great car argument is a non-starter, not to mention that it's simply absurd to claim that a racer can win four consecutive F1 titles and not be supremely talented. Those who don't believe Vettel is a superb racer need to re-evaluate that position based on the best comparison any driver has: His teammate.
In the past four years where Vettel has been champion, his stablemate Mark Webber mounted a credible challenge to the German's championship aspirations only once in 2010. Otherwise, the veteran Australian has been completely outclassed by his younger teammate, and the numbers completely hammer home this point. In his four championship seasons, Vettel has 31 wins, 38 poles, 50 podium finishes, 18 fastest laps, and 1,994 laps led in 74 grands prix. Over the same time period, Webber's numbers are: seven wins, 11 poles, 29 podium finishes, 15 fastest laps, and 510 laps led.
In fact, even taking Vettel completely out of the equation for the past four years and assuming his replacement at Red Bull finished behind Webber in every race, the Australian would only have taken the championship in 2010, while McLaren's Jenson Button would have won in 2011 and Fernando Alonso, of Ferrari, in 2012. Alonso looks to be the likely runner-up again this year, while Webber is fifth with three races to go.
In the past four years, Vettel's main challenger has not been his teammate but two-time world champion Alonso. The Spaniard is arguably the top driver on the F1 grid after taking the title fight with Vettel to the last race of the year twice in the past four seasons despite being saddled with an inferior car.
Fans may forget that without a massive strategic blunder by Ferrari in the final race of 2010 which cost Alonso a podium finish, Vettel would only be a three-time champion today. Alonso's failed challenges also bring in another important element in the F1 title equation that Red Bull has over Ferrari and the others of late: teamwork.
There's no doubt the Red Bull has worked hard to have the right resources in place to deliver the goods, and front and centre in the supporting cast is the unmatched technical brilliance of Adrian Newey, who is the only person to have designed world championship-winning cars with three different teams. And, as much as Newey's designs play into Vettel's strengths, the team also excels in devising the right strategy for him, which always seems to keep his car at the front no matter what circumstances throws at them.
Sunday's race in India was no exception, with many thinking Red Bull's choice to qualify Vettel on the softer and faster-wearing option tire rather than the harder and more durable "prime" would be his undoing. Instead, he pitted on the second lap to slap a set of the harder tires on his car and then scythed through the field, moving from 14th to first by the mid-point of the 60 lap race and never looking back.
And that's why it's completely unsurprising that one of the first things Vettel talked about after winning title No. 4 on Sunday was the amount of effort which goes into giving him a winning car week in and week out.
"Surely you could argue that I have an important job when I'm out there driving the car – no doubt I'm aware of that – but I'm not selfish, I'm not taking all the credit myself," Vettel said.
"I'm very thankful for what these guys are doing. If you look at their pay check at the end of the month, you'd be surprised if you could do the amount of hours that they do. I think it's better (hourly wage wise) to work at McDonald's than to do what they do. It's 100 per cent commitment."
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Jeff Pappone