Sebastian Vettel, the flawless champion
I have a cartoon character on my phone who greatly amuses young children. He is a dog called Ben who sits languidly in an armchair reading a newspaper with his feet up. If you say something to Ben, he pops his head from behind the newspaper, shakes his head and says "na, na, na, na" or, worse, blows you a raspberry. When I heard Christian Horner, the Red Bull team boss, coming on the radio to inform Sebastian Vettel that he had just won the Formula One Drivers' World Championship yesterday in Japan, my first instinct was to do a Ben and go "Na, na, na, na - we've known this since May!"
I hastily corrected that thought when the sheer scale of the young man's achievement sank in as I watched Vettel standing on the third step of the podium while God Save the Queen played in acknowledgment of Jenson Button's victory at Suzuka. Here was a back-to-back double world champion - only the ninth ever in the history of the sport - who had not even lived long enough to see his 25th birthday. At this tender age, Vettel has won nineteen Grands Prix. That is stupendous.
To put it in its appropriate context, at the same stage in the career of Michael Schumacher - the most successful driver ever - Schumacher had won only two races. Vettel makes winning seem so easy that it is well within the realm of possibility that Schumacher's impossible record of seven world championships could be beaten before very long. Vettel's strength lies in his consistency: not only has he been the only driver this season to finish every single race, he has finished all but one on the podium. He is now the world champion and there are four races left to go. He has got there having only failed to score pole position three times out of fifteen. Amazing.
So far, so supernatural. But I thought I should challenge myself and test my initial reaction to yesterday's news in this blog. Why did I react like I did? The more I think about it, the more I realise that, while facetious and perhaps silly, it smacks of something deeper. I am not usually that disrespectful of F1 drivers who have joined the ranks of Alberto Ascari, Juan Manuel Fangio, Jack Brabham, Alain Prost, Ayrton Senna, Michael Schumacher, Mika Hakkinen and Fernando Alonso. After all, I never felt any fondness for Fernando Alonso - I think he is a sod, frankly - but my first reaction when he got his back-to-back double championship in 2006 was to take a long swig of my drink and stand up and applaud. So what is going on?
I think the answer is simply this: Vettel is not a driver who provokes emotion in F1 fans. There is enormous respect felt for the young man but there is a vital ingredient missing: love. It is a crucial ingredient in the making of a sports fan. Think of a football fan who sits through a dismal game in the wind and rain at below zero temperatures while his team is receiving a walloping and you will understand what I am talking about. It is what causes me to get up before the crack of dawn to watch the Japanese Grand Prix when I can easily set Sky Plus to record everything and then watch it a few hours later in comfort.
People loved Ayrton Senna because he was a great driver but also because he was a flawed human being. The same can be said of Lewis Hamilton. When people express outrage and scream in frustration at Hamilton's antics on the race track, they do so out of love. Most of us can look back at youthful indiscretions because we are all flawed human beings in some respects. Vettel is a little too perfect. He swings his car into pole position with flawless efficiency and then, like a well oiled machine, leads each race from the front without making a single mistake. While you can certainly see Hamilton getting a caning for being caught smoking a sneaky fag behind the bike sheds, you think of Vettel as the prefect who did the catching. Vettel will always be respected, he will never be loved.
To understand the concept it helps to think back to the days before the Germans and the Japanese taught the world how to make motor cars so that they are now all uniformly reliable and safe. If you bought a Mercedes in the 1960s or 70s, everything fitted together perfectly and it purred along competently but it did not set the pulses thumping. A Ferrari 250 GTO or an E-type Jaguar would break down regularly and probably leak oil; but if you are lucky enough to see one of those beauties today and step back and admire each one you will probably see the Italian tears on the bodywork of the Ferrari and English ones in the alloy wheels of the Jag. They are probably the most beautiful motor vehicles ever made. This is because they were built with devotion that came from the heart.
That is the essential problem of Sebastian Vettel; he touches the head, not the heart.
Gitau
9 October 2011
I hastily corrected that thought when the sheer scale of the young man's achievement sank in as I watched Vettel standing on the third step of the podium while God Save the Queen played in acknowledgment of Jenson Button's victory at Suzuka. Here was a back-to-back double world champion - only the ninth ever in the history of the sport - who had not even lived long enough to see his 25th birthday. At this tender age, Vettel has won nineteen Grands Prix. That is stupendous.
To put it in its appropriate context, at the same stage in the career of Michael Schumacher - the most successful driver ever - Schumacher had won only two races. Vettel makes winning seem so easy that it is well within the realm of possibility that Schumacher's impossible record of seven world championships could be beaten before very long. Vettel's strength lies in his consistency: not only has he been the only driver this season to finish every single race, he has finished all but one on the podium. He is now the world champion and there are four races left to go. He has got there having only failed to score pole position three times out of fifteen. Amazing.
So far, so supernatural. But I thought I should challenge myself and test my initial reaction to yesterday's news in this blog. Why did I react like I did? The more I think about it, the more I realise that, while facetious and perhaps silly, it smacks of something deeper. I am not usually that disrespectful of F1 drivers who have joined the ranks of Alberto Ascari, Juan Manuel Fangio, Jack Brabham, Alain Prost, Ayrton Senna, Michael Schumacher, Mika Hakkinen and Fernando Alonso. After all, I never felt any fondness for Fernando Alonso - I think he is a sod, frankly - but my first reaction when he got his back-to-back double championship in 2006 was to take a long swig of my drink and stand up and applaud. So what is going on?
I think the answer is simply this: Vettel is not a driver who provokes emotion in F1 fans. There is enormous respect felt for the young man but there is a vital ingredient missing: love. It is a crucial ingredient in the making of a sports fan. Think of a football fan who sits through a dismal game in the wind and rain at below zero temperatures while his team is receiving a walloping and you will understand what I am talking about. It is what causes me to get up before the crack of dawn to watch the Japanese Grand Prix when I can easily set Sky Plus to record everything and then watch it a few hours later in comfort.
People loved Ayrton Senna because he was a great driver but also because he was a flawed human being. The same can be said of Lewis Hamilton. When people express outrage and scream in frustration at Hamilton's antics on the race track, they do so out of love. Most of us can look back at youthful indiscretions because we are all flawed human beings in some respects. Vettel is a little too perfect. He swings his car into pole position with flawless efficiency and then, like a well oiled machine, leads each race from the front without making a single mistake. While you can certainly see Hamilton getting a caning for being caught smoking a sneaky fag behind the bike sheds, you think of Vettel as the prefect who did the catching. Vettel will always be respected, he will never be loved.
To understand the concept it helps to think back to the days before the Germans and the Japanese taught the world how to make motor cars so that they are now all uniformly reliable and safe. If you bought a Mercedes in the 1960s or 70s, everything fitted together perfectly and it purred along competently but it did not set the pulses thumping. A Ferrari 250 GTO or an E-type Jaguar would break down regularly and probably leak oil; but if you are lucky enough to see one of those beauties today and step back and admire each one you will probably see the Italian tears on the bodywork of the Ferrari and English ones in the alloy wheels of the Jag. They are probably the most beautiful motor vehicles ever made. This is because they were built with devotion that came from the heart.
That is the essential problem of Sebastian Vettel; he touches the head, not the heart.
Gitau
9 October 2011
posted by Gitau at 7:19 pm
3 comments
