F1: Special place in F1 awaits Vettel

The F1 championship is about to begin in Melbourne with dual world champion Sebastian Vettel eyeing an even higher ranking in the sport's history and teammate Mark Webber racing for his survival

Three-peat would add youngster to Fangio-Schumacher 'club'

Sir Stirling Moss has described Sebastian Vettel as "a modern-day Fangio". Bernie Ecclestone reckons Vettel could end up beating Michael Schumacher's records -- seven world titles and 91 Grand Prix victories.

Argentinean Juan-Manuel Fangio won five championships -- four of them in a row, from 1954 to '57.

German Schumacher won two with Benetton in the mid-90s and then five straight with Ferrari from 2000 to 2004.

Vettel, another German and still only 24, starts a new season in Melbourne this weekend favoured to become only the third driver to win three F1 titles in a row.

Italian Albert Ascari, Australia's Sir Jack Brabham, Frenchman Alain Prost, Brazilian Ayrton Senna, Finland's Mika Hakkinen and Spain's Fernando Alonso won back-to-back crowns without achieving a three-peat (although three of them won titles in other years).

Vettel, champion the past two years with Red Bull Racing, is one of six world champions in the field this year. The others are Schumacher, in the third year of a comeback with Mercedes, Alonso, entering his third season with Ferrari, McLaren's British pair Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button, and Finn Kimi Raikkonen, a champion with Ferrari but returning from a two-year rallying "sabbatical' with the Lotus team that was previously Renault's factory outfit.

The six will comprise a quarter of the grid at Melbourne's Albert Park street circuit.

There also are two Aussies in the field now -- Vettel's teammate Mark Webber, lining up for his 11th Australian GP, and Perth 22-year-old Daniel Ricciardo, with the Toro Rosso team after 11 GPs for small Spanish team HRT last year.

F1 testing form is harder to gauge than the performances of football teams pre-season.

McLaren looked to perhaps have narrowed Red Bull's advantage a little, aided by the rule change that has outlawed the blown diffuser perfected by Red Bull designer Adrian Newey.

Red Bull was still tampering with the exhausts on its Renault engine after 12 days of testing and may massage it more in the Melbourne track sessions before Saturday evening's qualifying.

It will be then that the truest comparison of the 2012 cars will be seen, but in all likelihood Red Bull's RB8 will still have an edge on McLaren's MP4-27.

If that is so, and the team that began life as Stewart Grand Prix and morphed into Jaguar Racing and then became Red Bull Racing, and the advantage remains -- however slight -- throughout the season, then a third straight title and a place in that special "club" with Schumacher and Fangio most likely will be Vettel.

Already, in just 81 GPs, he has amassed 21 wins, 36 podium finishes and 30 pole positions. Last year he won 11 times, romping away with the title after it had gone to the wire in 2010.

"We don't want what happened last year [again this year]," F1 impresario Ecclestone has said. "That was not too good [although the racing was not as one-sided as the results might indicate]... We perhaps need a change [of champion]."

A change might be good for F1, but it will require a rival surpassing the brilliance of Vettel - and Newey. Ominously, Vettel declared himself "happy" with the results of testing at Barcelona and Jerez in Spain, even though it was "not perfect".

"We had some bits here and there failing, and some bits that we need to sort out, but it was quite good for us," he said. "You never know where you are until you get to Melbourne, and even then you don't really see what everyone else has got until qualifying -- so I'm looking forward to getting started.

"Australia is not a permanent race track. It's quite bumpy and it's tough for the car."

It was at Albert Park that Vettel began his 2011 dominance with a victory, while teammate Webber is yet to notch a top-three finish in his home race.

The Aussie's best finishes in Melbourne have been two fifth places, most memorably on debut in 2002 and unhappily last year. He is trying to treat the Australian GP more like any other race this time, although he has catered to the patriotism of the fans by incorporating more of an Australian theme into his helmet colour scheme.

As the weekend's race draws near the focus thankfully will switch from where last year seemingly went so wrong for Webber to what's ahead. Almost forgotten over the off-season is that he is a last-start winner, at the Brazilian GP, even if that seventh victory of his F1 career may have been "gifted" to him by Red Bull Racing as it cautiously preserved Vettel's gearbox.

And, while he struggled to get to grips with Pirelli's tyres and was comprehensively outshone by Vettel, Webber scored more points in last year's championship than in 2010 -- 258 compared with 242 (which included four wins). Both years he wound up third in the championship.

Ecclestone reckons that 35-year-old Webber could be runner-up to Vettel this year. He may need to do that to ensure another year's extension of his contract.

It will be a year of watching whether Webber can earn that -- and whether Vettel can elevate himself further into the pantheon of F1's gods.

Read the latest Carsales Network news and reviews on your mobile, iPhone or PDA at the carsales mobile site

F1: Special place in F1 awaits Vettel

Tags