“If he doesn’t have any reliability issues, I am willing to put money on it,”
the 2008 world champion said. It was as powerful a reminder as any of the
power that Red Bull wield.
Red Bull team principal Christian Horner was hardly playing down Vettel’s
chances either, describing the 26-year-old’s form as “supreme”, although he
said that it would be nice to see Mark Webber take one final victory before
quitting F1 for sports cars next season. “Sebastian has won every race since
the summer break,” Horner said.
“There are still four to go and we will try to cary this momentum into the
last four. We couldn’t have imagined he would have this run of success but
the way he is driving is quite supreme. Mark got pretty close [in Japan] and
it would be great to see him win a race before the end of the year.”
Speaking to The Telegraph, Horner added that running such a well-oiled race
team would “probably be easy” compared with fatherhood, his biggest scare of
last week coming in the shape of his first child, Olivia, who had to be
delivered early while he was looking into making a 15,000-mile round trip
back to the UK to be by his partner Beverley’s side.
“My plan was to get back on Monday morning at 8am and for the child to be
delivered by midday,” Horner said. “But I spoke to Beverley on Tuesday and
she didn’t feel so good.
“She had an appointment with the doctor and they checked her blood pressure
and said it was a bit high. They were a bit worried about pre-eclampsia. So
she then rang me and said they are looking to do this on Thursday, you’d
better look at getting a flight back.
“So as I’m looking at flights she then rang and said: ‘Actually, they have
just done another test and they want to do this in an hour’. I spoke to the
doctors and said ‘Just get on with it – make sure they are both safe.’
Olivia arrived about 3.30am Tokyo time.
“We went out for some karaoke on Wednesday and wetted the baby’s head. It has
been a busy week, that’s for sure, and it just shows that you can’t plan
everything in life. I think fatherhood will probably be my biggest
challenge. Running a Formula One team will be easy by comparison.”
It helps when your rivals have conceded defeat before they have stepped into
their cars.