Left field

Formula One’s youngest world champion was always a man in a hurry

From the very first moment he arrived in Formula One as a curly-haired teenager, new world champion Sebastian Vettel was a young man in a hurry.

The 23-year-old Red Bull Driver, who became the youngest winner of the drivers’ championship with victory in Sunday’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, has set records from day one.

Within seconds of his debut in Friday practice at the 2006 Turkish Grand Prix, he had been fined for speeding in the pit lane. The youngest driver to take part in a practice session, in quick succession he became the youngest to score a point, youngest to secure pole position and youngest to win a grand prix.

Born in the same year that Red Bull sold their first can of energy drink, the race ace with the look of a tousled schoolboy and cheeky grin has always seemed a marketing match made in heaven for the newly crowned Formula One constructors’ champions.

Irreverent, with a penchant for British humour and the Beatles, there has never been any doubt that Vettel is Austrian-owned Red Bull’s blue-eyed boy.

Helmut Marko, the former grand prix racer who is a close advisor to Red Bull’s billionaire owner Dietrich Mateschitz, has championed his cause from an early age and was on the podium, showered in champagne, as Vettel celebrated the biggest win of his life on Sunday.

Vettel, only the second man to win the title for Germany after Michael Schumacher, has also saved the best for last, for the moment when it truly mattered.

F1 team orders — What’s all the fuss about?

Red Bull have gone out of their way to stress that they will not be handing out team orders at the decisive season-ending F1 Grand Prix in Abu Dhabi. Oh no. They do say they “expect” Sebastian Vettel to help team mate Mark Webber win the title should the situation arise but will not be “ordering” him to do so.

This seems to be an important distinction in a sport where the phrase “team orders” carries with it a stigma equivalent to “professional foul” or “ungentlemanly conduct” in soccer.

But really, what’s the big deal about a sports team telling its highly paid employees to perform in a certain way? In cycling, all riders are expected to follow team orders and in general there is not supposed to be ‘I’ in team sports. However, in F1 you cannot have a champion or a winner without an I. The I, the individual, is as important to many F1 fans as the team.

Red Bull are right to play the politically correct card — the furore that engulfed Ferrari earlier this season when Felipe Massa was politely urged to move over and let Fernando Alonso win the German Grand Prix will not be easily forgotten and a similar decision by Red Bull at the season finale could really see the wheels come off.

Or could it? In Hockenheim, Alonso looked well out of the running for the championship race and an emotionally charged Massa was heading for a first win since recovering from a near-fatal crash in Hungary in 2009.

In Abu Dhabi, missing out on the championship because you’re not allowed to tell your own team what to do could leave Red Bull feeling as if they have scored an own goal. However, they are also selling an image associated with their product — one of equal opportunities and fair competition.

Come Sunday in Abu Dhabi, a first-placed Vettel could well be all that is standing between a maiden drivers’ championship for his team mate Webber and the team as a whole. You could hazard a guess that even if he didn’t want to, Vettel would ultimately bow to the pressure – the repercussions on team morale would make for a difficult end of season party.

Anyone still want medals to decide F1 title?

If Bernie Ecclestone had got his way before the start of the season, Jenson Button might have been crowned Formula One champion in Singapore on Sunday.

The commercial supremo’s plan for the championship to be decided by an Olympic-style medals system, with the title going to the driver taking most golds, would have left Brawn’s Button out of reach.

With six wins in the first seven races, the Briton’s tally cannot now be matched by anyone else.

Singapore winner Lewis Hamilton, Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel and Button’s Brazilian team mate Rubens Barrichello all have two wins with three races left.

The only interest in Sunday’s Japanese Grand Prix would have been the constructors’ championship and it is pretty much a given now anyway that Brawn will win it in their first full season.

Brazil and Abu Dhabi, making its debut with what promises to be the most lavish race yet, would have been irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.

As it is, Button has edged 15 points clear of Barrichello and could win the title at Suzuka. But the battle could equally very well go down to the wire as well. There is still plenty at stake.

Would you drive into a wall if someone asked you to?

Crashing a Formula One car is easy. Even I could do that, although fitting into the cockpit might be a bit of a squeeze. It’s the driving that is difficult.

In the old days, when there were fewer races in a season but more funerals, you crashed at your peril. 

“In my era, if you crashed a car it was pretty serious. Nowadays if you crash a car you can’t get hurt really badly because it is so fantastically made,” Stirling Moss observed this week in an interview ahead of his 80th birthday.  

That said, crashing deliberately is simply counter-intuitive. Everything in a driver’s instincts tells him to back off, correct the slide, lift the throttle, avoid the wall. Self-preservation is a basic instinct.

All of which makes the allegations being levelled against the Renault Formula One team, who have abstained from commenting, all the more extraordinary.

The former champions will be hauled in front of the governing International Automobile Federation (FIA) in Paris on Sept. 21 to face accusations that they ordered Brazilian Nelson Piquet to deliberately crash in Singapore last year to create a situation that would allow team mate Fernando Alonso to win the race.

Schumacher can finally show Hamilton and Vettel who’s boss

Just seeing Michael Schumacher back in an F1 car, especially a Ferrari, will be enough for most motor sport fans.

But the chance to watch him race against young guns Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel is something very special. 

The German retired before they appeared on the scene and there have been comparisons ever since the pair got on the grid –  with compatriot Vettel even having the nickname ‘Baby Schumi’.  

Will it be the case of the old master showing the young pretenders how it is done, or will 40-year-old Schumacher be taught a lesson of his own?

After a terrible start, this year’s Ferrari has been gradually improving and no one would put it past Schumacher winning one of the season’s remaining races.

Hamilton has also burst into form and if the world champion meets the sport’s greatest on the first corner, expect a bump or two.

Don’t count Ferrari out yet

Ferrari are in a deep crisis and performances this season have been disastrous, according to a couple of Italian blogs.

Last season’s champions are without any points after three races and Sunday’s Chinese Grand Prix, won by Sebastian Vettel in his Red Bull.

I live in Italy and a lot of my friends are fickle Ferrari fans. But, you never know, they could come roaring back when their adapted car, with a new double-decker diffuser, appears at the Spanish Grand Prix on May 10.

Then again, maybe Kimi Raikkonen is right saying the title has already gone…