Formula One: How will Sebastian Vettel respond to losing his crown?

Sebastian Vettel’s reign over Formula One has formally come to an end with the German finally handing the crown he has worn for four straight years to the sport’s new world champion. It was always inevitable that Vettel would one day concede the title. The rise of a career that had been ever in the ascendant was always going to come to a halt one day. But it nevertheless marks a watershed moment in the recent history of the sport and brings the curtain down on an era of dominance that saw Vettel and Red Bull set new benchmarks. It’s very rare in Formula One that a driver scales such heights as Vettel did over the last four years. [caption id=“attachment_1820541” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] For the first time in five years, Sebastian Vettel is not Formula One champion. AFP[/caption] Only three other drivers apart from Vettel have won four or more titles in the 64-year history of the sport – Michael Schumacher, Juan Manuel Fangio and Alain Prost. In a purely – and narrow – statistical sense, Vettel’s achievements are comparable only to Fangio and Schumacher. Schumacher romped to five straight titles with Ferrari in the early 2000s, while Fangio’s reign also lasted four years between 1954 and 1957 when he won four titles on the trot. WHISPERS IN THE PADDOCK Such staggering success is hard to sustain and with Formula One set for sweeping rule changes in 2014, whispers in the paddock spoke of a shifting of the balance of power as early as last year. The new hybrid engines were still being developed on the dyno then and were still some way off from running in anger against each other on track. But the whispers spoke of Mercedes having developed a world-beater of an engine while Renault, who supply Red Bull, were rumoured to have produced the runt of the litter. Even Vettel, as he powered to a nine-straight victories in the second half of the season, acknowledged that a change of guard at the top was likely and urged his team to make the most of the success while it lasted. “I’m speechless, I’m speechless,” Vettel radioed in after racing to a record eighth-straight win at the U.S. Grand Prix in Austin last year “We have to remember these days, there’s no guarantee they will last forever. Enjoy them as long as they last.” “With the new regulations coming in, I think nobody really knows where we will stand,” he later told reporters in the press conference. “It’s unknown at this stage but generally I think we need to remember and therefore enjoy the moment and the days we’re having.” BEATEN AND OUTSHONE Whether he truly knew he faced a tough title defence in 2014 or if he was just playing down expectations ahead of a season of wholesale changes, Vettel’s words proved prophetic as winter testing got underway. While Mercedes racked up the miles with their brand-new hybrid power units, relentlessly pounding around Jerez and Sakhir, Red Bull struggled to string even a series of laps in succession without breaking down. They went into the season having completed just over 1,700 kilometers of running compared to Mercedes who had managed to run nearly 5,000 kilometers over the three pre-season tests. Only Lotus and Marussia had fared worse. Given Red Bull’s dismal winter, Vettel went into the season with his eyes very much open to the fact that defending his title would be a nearly impossible task. But what he – or anyone else for that matter – most certainly wouldn’t have counted on was just how good new team-mate Daniel Ricciardo would be. The Australian had always been recognised as a quick qualifier but with the tendency to fall back through the pack during races. But as Vettel struggled to come to terms with the significantly different handling of the new-for-2014 cars, Ricciardo emerged as the force to contend with at Red Bull, firmly putting his illustrious team-mate in the shade as he took three wins in a season in which Vettel was unable to add to his record-equalling thirteen from last year. It’s been a humbling season for Vettel, the first check in a career that up to this point had always been on the rise. But, in a sign of how far he has come in the four years since he first clinched the title, he has been gracious in defeat. There has been frustration, of course, and there were flashpoints with Ricciardo early on, particularly in China, but there has been no freezing out of the Australian as there had been with his former team-mate Webber. “We are at a point where I have won three races, he hasn’t won any but he still acts the same around me,” Ricciardo told Australian media recently. “We still talk about the car and other things, you know, tells me how his baby girl is going and all the rest of it. “I think for a racing relationship, team-mate scenario it is as good as can be.” EQUANIMITY IN THE FACE OF DEFEAT Vettel is someone who takes a keen interest in the sport’s history and is conscious of his place in it. There is a perception that much of his success is down to his Adrian Newey-designed Red Bull has never really gone away. Doubts about whether his ability is on a par with the greats of the sport have always lingered and the belief that he was only as successful as he was because of his car has only hardened this year. For a man to whom it means so much to be counted among that select group of greats, it surely mustn’t have been easy to face questions about his ability from a media only too eager to tear down a champion once they tire of him winning. But, while the frustration at not even being in contention for the title has been visibly simmering under the surface, he has met all the questions and doubts with equanimity. “Well, I think it is what it is and sometimes you have years like this obviously everything that you can imagine and more happened this year,” Vettel told reporters on the sidelines of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, the last race of the season. “So it’s, I would say, part of the game.” “I think I realised sooner than today or tomorrow that I won’t be fighting for the championship. So in that regard I think it’s a pretty relaxed race.” His move to Ferrari is another sign of how much Vettel has grown from an impatient, petulant, ‘crash-kid’ to a multiple world champion still hungry but no longer impatient for success and willing to invest the time needed to build an ailing team into a championship winning outfit. But, despite the maturity he has publicly displayed in the face of defeat this season, it remains to be seen if losing has truly shaped Vettel into a champion in the sporting sense, or if it has simply resulted from resignation early on to the fact that he wasn’t going to win the title. Time – and Ferrari – will tell.