Editorial Ranking 2013: Sebastian Vettel (1st)
To definitively close the 2013 season and move towards 2014, the MotorsInside editorial team invites you to look back on its ten best drivers of the past season. In first place in the ranking, it's the inevitable Sebastian Vettel who emerges.
His statistics:
1st in the overall ranking
397 points
13 victories
16 podiums
7 best tricks
Best qualification: 1st (Australia / Malaysia / Canada / Italy / Singapore / Korea / India / United States / Brazil)
Best race: 1st (Malaysia / Bahrain / Canada / Germany / Belgium / Italy / Singapore / Korea / Japan / India / Abu Dhabi / United States / Brazil)
His season:
2013 is the record-breaking season for Sebastian Vettel. By winning his fourth world driver’s championship title, the German equaled Alain Prost and unabashedly approached Juan Manuel Fangio (5 titles) and especially his idol Michael Schumacher (7 titles).
At 26, his success is exceptional and especially promises an incredible hunt for records. At that age, Alain Prost was only winning his first race while the Red Baron Schumi had only one of his seven titles to his name. Vettel, with 39 victories and 45 pole positions, is already positioning himself as one of the greats of the discipline, with realistically ten good seasons of competition still ahead of him.
At the beginning of the year, however, no one could have anticipated such dominance. Struggling to understand the Pirelli tires, Red Bull and its leader were losing significant points to their rivals, Ferrari and Fernando Alonso leading the charge. After reverting to the 2012 tire specifications following the Hungarian Grand Prix, the championship’s landscape changed dramatically, and the formidable Vettel took all victories with an impressive streak of 9 consecutive wins.
His dominance was unchallenged even within his own team, relegating Mark Webber to the role of a mere foil unable to win a single Grand Prix this year. Even though the Australian inadvertently revealed a dark side of Vettel during a controversy in Malaysia.
As he often likes to repeat, no one knows what tomorrow will bring, especially with the regulatory changes planned in /f1/actualite/16785-classement-de-la-redaction-2013-jenson-button-10eme.html. But with this fourth title and his dominance, Vettel has now entered the legends of Formula 1 through the front door.
The editorial opinion:
Regarding Vettel, the Fan F1 editorial team is unanimous: the German has achieved feats as highlighted by Antoine Maricot, who believes the driver had his most convincing season yet. For Benoit Fraikin, it is once again the consistency in the German’s victories that impresses the most: starting from Spa-Francorchamps, the now four-time world champion performed flawlessly. His successes may bore some, but one cannot remain indifferent in front of such mastery.
But some, like Romain Mathon, would have liked to see a bit more zest in Vettel’s demeanor and regret that Guillaume Roquelin watches over him. But that didn’t stop him from crushing the competition, as Fabien Gaillard rightly points out. Ultimately, it’s Sarah Nuyens who best summarizes Vettel’s season in these terms: I think there’s nothing more to add for Vettel, he’s been dominating for 4 years now. He had an almost perfect season by stringing together victories.
The highlight of his season: his victory in Singapore where the German dominated the competition by consistently driving over a second faster than Webber and almost two seconds faster than the rest of the field. That day, his rivals understood that they would no longer stand a chance against him.
Discover the other drivers in the editorial ranking:
6th – Nico Hülkenberg
