The unfancied German youngster with a liking for British comedy planned his race perfectly to win his maiden Grand Prix title, writes Alan Henry.
They swarmed here in their customary thousands, packing the grandstands to the rafters in keen anticipation of a Ferrari-McLaren showdown only to find the World Championship contest between Lewis Hamilton and Felipe Massa reduced to a secondary issue. Instead, the tifosi sat sodden and bewitched as an engaging young kid with a ready smile and a wacky sense of humour embracing Little Britain and Monty Python drove into the Formula One record books.
Sebastian Vettel started from pole position in his Ferrari-powered Toro Rosso in the same conditions of heavy rain that had seen him vault to the top of the timing sheets the previous afternoon.
The sophisticaterd view from more seasoned observers was that the Toro Rosso driver might be hard-pressed to maintain his performance edge in the event of the track drying out completely, but when the rain finally eased after a dozen or so laps the young Vettel was more than six seconds ahead of Heikki Kovalainen (McLaren-Mercedes), in second place, and controlled the race with consummate skill and confidence.
“It was difficult to realise what had happened,” said Vettel whose wide-eyed innocent delight wooed the crowd. “It was unbelievable seeing everybody going crazy all the way round the circuit. To see the people in the team, from my family, going mad and then to listen to my national anthem I started to cry.
“I think we made the right choice yesterday. I was thinking that today would be a dry race, so we kept the dry settings, we were very fast on the straights and it was important to get out (of the pits) before the one-stoppers (cars making only one refuelling stop) came out.”
Due to the heavy rain and consequent lack of visibility the first couple of laps of the 53-lap race were run at reduced speed behind the safety car before being unleashed to begin racing proper at the start of lap three. Although Lewis Hamilton seemed to be out of the winning equation after only managing to qualify in 15th following a strategic error in tyre choice, everyone expected his team-mate Kovalainen to hunt down Vettel quickly in the opening phase of the race. In fact, by the end of lap five Vettel had stretched his lead to 5.2sec, then 6.4sec after another four laps and finally to 11.0sec on lap 17 just before coming in for his first refuelling stop next time round.
“Clearly it was impossible to win,” said Kovalainen. “Seb and Toro Rosso have been strong all weekend. I had a little bit of a problem in the early part of the race. In the first stint with extreme (wet) tyres, I was struggling to find any time to go faster, but towards the end it got a little bit better but I think it was the maximum we could do today.”
Hamilton’s qualifying effort was frustrated by a combination of heavy rain allied to a bewildering strategic decision to run on the lightly grooved intermediate tyres during the second stint of qualifying, rather than the deeper-grooved “extreme wet” option which was adopted by almost everybody else in the field.
Just about everything went wrong for Hamilton. He lost about four extra minutes when his McLaren was selected for a random weight check coming into the pit lane, and he also glazed his brake pads, which adversely affected its ability to slow from high speed in the cool conditions.
“It was a joint decision to go out on wet-weather (intermediate) tyres at the start of Q2 — partly mine and partly my engineers’,” he said. “We thought it was the right way to go at the time because it was getting drier, but the grip level was poor so I came in and switched to extremes.”
In the race Hamilton simply flew. By the time he made his first refuelling at the end of lap 27 he was barely a second behind Vettel and it seemed clear McLaren were aiming for a one-stop strategy if the conditions remained wet.
As it turned out, Hamilton would stop again on lap 36 to fit intermediate tyres, before resuming to finish an eventual seventh after an extremely strong run, although both Timo Glock (Toyota) and Mark Webber (Red Bull) were less than impressed by the manner in which Hamilton banged wheels with them as he roared past during his climb through the field. Robert Kubica (BMW Sauber) finished behind Kovalainen in third place, followed by Fernando Alonso (Renault), Nick Heidfeld (BMW Sauber) and Felipe Massa, who successfully fended off the hard-charging Hamilton by 1.09sec.
© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2008Vettel factsHe’s a fan of British cultureHe is a huge admirer of the comedy Little Britain, and does a neat line in impersonations of its characters. His cultural Anglophilia extends also to a love of League of Gentlemen and The Beatles.
Does not love British foodHis culinary tastes are less anglo-centric: he lists his least favourite meal as an English breakfast.
He is proud of where he comes fromVettel races in a helmet featuring the coat of arms of his native Kreis Bergstrasse region in southern Germany.
He has broken the rulesAs well as now being the youngest ever Formula One Grand Prix winner, he also incurred the sport’s fastest ever fine: $1,000 in 2006 in Turkey for speeding in the pit lane during Friday practice.
He was a reluctant scholarVettel claims his biggest achievement outside of racing is managing to finish high school.
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