Formula 1 - All about Vettel
Djordje Bogicević
Sebastian Vettel, born on 3 July 1987 is a German racing driver who used to raced in Formula One for Scuderia Ferrari and in now racing for Aston Martin. He is a four-time Formula One World Champion. He had won the Formula one Championship four times in a row. In 2010,2011,2012,2013. In 2019 in the overall standings he finished fifth. And in 2020 he finished thirteenth.
Vettel was born in Heppenheim, West Germany, to Norbert and Heike Vettel. He has one younger brother called Fabian and two older sisters: Melanie, a dental technician, and Stefanie, a physiotherapist for disabled children.
Vettel started amateur karting at the young age of four years and began racing in karts series in 1995, at the age of eight. Having shown early talent, he was accepted into the Red Bull Junior Team at age eleven in 1998. In 2001 he won the Junior Monaco Kart Cup. In 2003, he was promoted to open-wheel cars and won the 2004 German Formula BMW Championship with 18 victories from 20 races. In 2005 he drove for ASL Mucke Motorsport in the Formula 3 Euro Series. He was placed fifth in the final standings with 63 points, winning the year's top rookie award. Vettel became BMW Sauber's third driver at the 2006 Formula 1 Turkish Grand Prix.
On his testing debut, Vettel set the fastest time in the second Friday Free Practice before the race. In his second testing session in the 2006 Italian Grand Prix, he set the fastest time in both Friday practice sessions, it was a great start for a young driver. In the 2007 Canadian Grand Prix, he scored his first points, because he finished 8th in the race and so he became the youngest driver to score a point in Formula 1. In the Chinese Grand Prix, he managed to finish the race on 4th place. In that time that was his best career standing. At the 2008 Italian Grand Prix, Vettel became the youngest driver in history to win a Formula 1 Grand Prix. He was 21 years and 74 days*. He broke the record set by Fernando Alonso at the 2003 Hungarian Grand Prix by 317 days. Vettel led for the majority of the Grand Prix and crossed the finish line 12.5 seconds ahead of McLaren's Heikki Kovalainen. It was the first podium of both Toro Rosso and Vettel. It was Toro Rosso's** only win.
Let's jump over to the Vettel career in Red Bull racing. Vettel came into Red Bull in 2009 and in the 2010 Championship he became the youngest Formula 1 world champion. Even though Vettel only won five races that year he won the Championship and it was really close, because Fernando Alonso had at the end of the year only 4 points less than Vettel. Vettel did some remarkable things such as scoring the most pole position in history of Formula 1*** and he successfully defended the title. Another of his World championship wins came in 2012 and so he defended the title once again, scoring 281 points, winning 5 races and being two times on second respectively on third position.
One of his best successes is the 2013 season. He won his fourth Championship and by this day his last one. In that season he scored 397 points, became 13 times on 1st place and at the end of the season he won 9 races in the row. Absolutely amazing.
Unfortunately for Vettel this was his last World Championship win. His form went down. He joined Ferrari in 2015 and even though he had won some races he never achieved the biggest success up to this date mostly because of Lewis Hamilton. Sebastian Vettel is 33 years old and in the 2020 season he finished 13th . In 2021 he join Aston Martin.
* In 2016 Verstapen in Spanish Grand Prix Vettel stole record of the youngest driver in Formula 1 Grand Prix winners being only 18 and 228 days.
** Now Torro Rosso is called Alfa Tauri.
*** Now in 2021 Lewis Hamilton has the most pole positions
sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sebastian_Vettel
Edited by JO