I’m not sure whether Sebastian Vettel‘s dominance of Formula One at the moment is good for it or not, but it is leading to dull races. Sure there was a fair amount of overtaking in Italy today, but nobody could possibly challenge for the lead at any stage. He has now won as many Grands Prix as Fernando Alonso, 32 – 6 of them this year. The trouble is, I can see him easily breaking the records set by Michael Schumacher that people said would never be broken.
Let’s look at the big picture and remember that Vettel is only 26 years old.
- Schumacher won 7 World Champions, Vettel already has 3 with a fourth looking increasingly likely. Time is certainly on his side here.
- Schumacher won 91 races in his career (from 308 races), Vettel currently has 32 victories under his belt from only 113 starts – with seasons getting longer (some think there will be 22 races next year) this can also easily be broken.
- Schumacher holds the record for most second places too, with 43 – Vettel is on 13.
- Most wins in a season: Schumacher with 13 in 2004 (Vettel’s best in 11 in 2011)
- Most consecutive wins in a season: Schumacher, 7, 2004 (Vettel, 4, 2012)
- Most wins of a single Grand Prix: Schumacher, France, 8 times (Vettel has won in Malaysia and Japan 3 times)
- Most Consecutive Top Two Finishes: Schumacher managed this 15 times in 2002, however Vettel managed 17 across the 2010 and 2011 seasons.
- Most Podium Appearances: Schumacher, 155 (Vettel, 55)
- Most Leading km (Career): Schumacher, 24144 (Vettel has plenty of time to catch up)
- Most leading laps (Season): Vettel already has this record with 739 (65.23%), however it is Nigel Mansell that has lead the most percentage of a season on 66.80% (692 laps in 1992)
- Most F1 Points (Career): Schumacher, 1566 (Again, Vettel has plenty of time to take over, especially now 25 points are available for a win rather than 10 as was the case for the majority of Schumacher’s time in the sport)
- Most F1 Points (Season): Vettel has this too with 392. Schumacher’s best, under a different scoring system was 148.
- Most Fastest Laps (Career): Schumacher, 77 (Vettel has 19).
- Most Fastest Laps (Season): a tie between Raikkonen (2008) and Schumacher (2004) with 10 (Vettel managed 6 in 2012)
- Most Pole Positions (Career): Schumacher, 68 (Vettel, 40)
- Most Pole Positions (Season): Vettel, 2011, 15 (78.95%) – Mansell again holds the highest percentage on 87.50% (14 poles in 1992)
- Most Front Row Starts: another held by Vettel between 2010 and 2011, 25
- Most wins from Poles (Season): Vettel, 2011, 9 (47.37%) – however Mansell also did this 9 times in 1992, 56.25%.
- Most Consecutive Points Classifications: Schumacher, 2001-2002, 24
Consider also that Vettel is the youngest World Champion (at 23 years and 134 days), as well as the youngest Double World Champion (24 years and 97 days) and the youngest Triple World Champion (25 years and 145 days – Ayrton Senna was 31 years and 227 days old when he clinched his third title…) and you begin to realise just how good he has been.
My problem with this is that when Schumacher first won titles in 1994 and 1995 he then moved to Ferrari and had a few dormant seasons. It wasn’t really until the 2000s that he really got a grip on the sport. Vettel already has his grip held very firmly and I can’t see that changing anytime soon.
I just hope the rules designed to shake things up a little for next year do their job and we get a more competitive order.
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Elsewhere today, I completed many jobs on my list – by no means all of them, but progress was made.
Band was interesting. You don’t really realise how monotonous David Bowie’s Heroes is until you hear a brass band arrangement of it… the lyrics make that song, not the melody. Arrangements of music only work well if there is a strong recognisable melody. Heroes doesn’t work well.
We may also have found a cache – of course we did, number 1021, just outside the band room. We have also been put in touch with someone who wants to organise a trail by next weekend, so there may be some frantic evenings ahead of us helping arrange that.
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