The brink of making history is a pretty daunting place to be stood, so spare a thought for Sebastian Vettel this weekend. The current world champion is the only man to finish every race so far this season, and all but one of them on the podium. He’s currently running at a staggering 77% pole position hit rate and, if all goes according to plan, will become Formula One’s seventh double world champion – and its youngest ever – by Sunday evening. That’s a pretty big thing to stick on your CV. But before we bicker over whether the young lad’s got the plums to do it or not, what exactly is it he needs to do?
Well, to make things as easy as possible, he obviously needs to win the race. Vettel is currently leading the championship by 112 points from Fernando Alonso, and with 25 points awarded for a race win and six races left to go, that leaves a potential 150 up for grabs. So – basically – if Seb takes the chequered flag on Sunday and Alonso isn’t on the podium, he’ll be world champion, providing Mark Webber and Jenson Button finish lower than second. So, realistically, Vettel’s best bet of quaffing a magnum of Mumm is to hope that Lewis Hamilton has a good race and follows him home.
The team is certainly confident he can do it, with news emerging earlier this week that Red Bull has booked a top secret celebration venue somewhere in Singapore to toast their finger-wagging hero. Realistically, though, chances are Christian Horner and his men will have to hold fire on those corks until the Japanese Grand Prix in a fortnight’s time. Why, you ask? Well, in the three years that the race has been held at the Marina Bay street circuit, Alonso has won twice. Then there’s Jenson Button – McLaren’s new number one driver has been on fire in the second half of the season (racking up 58 points in the last three races compared to Lewis Hamilton’s 24), so if anyone’s likely to keep Vettel off the top step of the podium, the thinking man’s money would be on him.
As ever, the man of the moment is playing it cool, telling a German newspaper: ‘I think it’s wrong to plan before something happens. First you have to win the lottery and then you worry about what to do with the winnings.’ And with Red Bull reportedly handing Vettel a €3million (A$5 million) bonus for winning the title last year, that analogy probably isn’t as far off as it sounds.
Here’s a vid of Our Mark doing a lap of the track last year;