1,000 Greatest Drivers: Sebastian Vettel
Grabbed Red Bull by the horns.
After pausing my Substack for a month, subscribers are being charged again, so I have to get this done. I planned this for Vettel’s birthday on July 3 and fell way behind. Normally when I charge, I place all the household-name drivers behind a paywall and offer up the more obscure ones for free, but I won’t be doing that here because I had already announced my plans to do this before the publication was unpaused. I’ve still been too inconsistent with recent posts to commit to a post every day, but I do have a driver planned for almost every day through early November, though I might occasionally plug in one of the drivers I skipped instead of the intended driver as the mood suits me.
I put canvas for #1; never heard of Gesso. Taipei, but I put Kuala Lumpur because of the Petronas Towers. I think I had stopped reading almanacs by the time Taipei 101 opened, so I’d never heard of it. I put Killarney for #3; again, I had nothing. I never watched anything TMNT-related even though I was the right age for it. Most of the people I knew in real life were into it; I don’t know, it might’ve been too violent for me. I just assumed it was also an Italian artist and put Caravaggio. I suppose first name required should’ve been a tipoff that it was a woman, but I couldn’t get myself there and put Charlie Moffitt.
I’d only vaguely heard of rondo and put counterpoint, but I think that was an answer too recently. I get why my opponent expected me to get #2 as I think I’d had a nearly undefeated streak on American history for quite a while, but I forgot about the Missouri Compromise and instead put Kentucky and Kansas, although coming to think of it, I think I knew Kentucky was admitted earlier than that and Kansas later. Still not a bad guess since I knew that Kentucky, like Missouri, was a slave state that didn’t leave the union. Never heard of #3 and put John; I don’t know why I thought that would be the easiest for my opponent. I correctly figured out what suffix the food would need to have, but guessed wrong and I guess sarsaparilla isn’t a spice. And I said Newfoundland for #6, which I guess was a 50/50 shot.
I put Rabindranath Tagore for #1, who was somebody my mom was a fan of, even though I misspelled it Rabindanith. After that other Mona Lisa question, I shouldn’t have guessed Mona Lisa for #2 but I did. Guessed samba for #3, which I guess a lot of people did. Put visible light for #4, which I think makes more sense than the actual answer. I’d definitely heard those ads for question #5 but I didn’t pay enough attention to them to remember what brand it was and I put L’Oréal. And then like I’ve said, I don’t follow the news so I had nothing for #6.
I knew a lot about card games for kids as a boy, but most of the ones explicitly for adults (canasta, pinochle, bridge) I never learned much about, and I randomly guessed canasta here although I considered pinochle. I knew retinol as a Scrabble world, certainly, but not its definition so I put carotene because I knew carrots helped with vision. Put Orange for #4 even though I knew that was a royal house, so it probably didn’t count as a group; I never would have gotten that. Reality TV is nothing I paid attention to. That was just something that really emerged/started to dominate when I was in college and I certainly didn’t have time for that shit, so I never got into it. I knew there was a Los Angeles but I would never have remembered all the cities that had shows, so I put Los Angeles. By this point, I had not clinched my spot and I expected to get relegated because I knew I’d likely lose my last match since Jon Arnold was one of the highest-ranked players in the division.
Well, even though I lost, I just barely avoided getting relegated. I’ve missed way more of the world history questions than I expected to (same for science, because I usually thought I did better in academic trivia categories, but maybe that’s not true since in adulthood I guess I assumed far more pop culture content), but I was really into astronomy for quite some time in my youth. Read through all the lists of space flights constantly, Apollo 13 was my favorite movie (as an adult, I now find it boring) so that was a cinch for me. Put Cairo for #2; not a bad guess, since it also sounds Greek. #3 you basically have to know and I put Alexander the Great. Never heard of Bon Appétit magazine and I guessed Teen Vogue, because I figured it would have to be something about childhood influencers and I know they’re recently very hip. And then for #5, I was struggling to come up with “famous characters from the 1600s” instead of following the hint from “glass”, but I just didn’t make the leap from “glass” to “glass slipper”.
Ultimately, it provides some content here that I doubt anyone is interested in, but this hasn’t been fun (much less than live bar trivia), so I’m definitely planning on quitting after the final match I have paid for, but I’ve still paid for two more matches of 25 games each, so I guess I’ll do those and post them here and then I’ll be done with it.
Well, I figured out the contractor I contacted was too good to be true. As I was only a few minutes from paying him on PayPal, I googled his name and found out that he was investigated for stiffing other people in repair work in the past and more disturbingly, that it appears he was arrested for holding a ten-year-old hostage. I let this man into my house. After I read all that, I broke off contact with him and went with the other cleaning agency. I scheduled an appointment for a deep cleaning on August 5. Somebody on Nextdoor claimed that he died on Sunday, which probably would have been only a couple hours after I declined the work. I have no idea what to make of that, but all I can say is that I was so desperate for Mom to come back that I’ve been really gullible and credulous.
I did hear back from the other contractor about the roof replacement and ramp installation. Although the work was supposed to be finished yesterday according to our contract, at least they’re getting ready to start working. They told me they would send a pamphlet or something consisting of all the color changes for the roof, but they haven’t sent it yet. They might begin work on the roof as soon as next week, but that largely will come down to the weather conditions for their jobs this week, and then they’ll start on the ramp after the roof is finished. I guess the offer the other contractor made was too good to be true as he was talking about $650 for a deep clean, patching the roof, and ramp installation, even though it clearly would have caused vastly more than that and since I already had the other contract through Onondaga County Community Development, I made the right choice to wait.
SEBASTIAN VETTEL…………GERMANY
Born: July 3, 1987
Best year: 2011
Best drive: 2008 Gran Premio Santander D'Italia at Autodromo Nazionale di Monza
The house upon which Red Bull was built, Vettel was called up to join their junior operation Scuderia Toro Rosso as a mid-season replacement for Scott Speed in 2007; four-time defending Champ Car champion Sébastien Bourdais joined him in 2008. Not only did Vettel sweep Bourdais in shared finishes, but he claimed the upset of the decade by winning from pole at Monza, becoming the then-youngest winner and polesitter, actually winning Toro Rosso’s only race before Red Bull itself won. After Red Bull promoted him in 2009, Vettel delivered the team’s first win in Shanghai.
From 2010-2013, Vettel became the third driver to win four consecutive championships after Juan Manuel Fangio and Michael Schumacher. He overtook Fernando Alonso for the 2010 championship by four points after winning Abu Dhabi, and nosed him out by three points in 2012, but his 2011 and 2013 title seasons were far more impressive. In 2011, he won 11 races and a record 15 poles, while his 13 wins, including nine consecutive, in 2013 set records. I prefer 2011 since he was slightly more dominant and had a better average running position, while I suspect other teams stopped developing their 2013 cars to prepare for the new 2014 regulations.
In his championship years, Vettel trained himself to utilize Red Bull’s blown diffusers to accelerate more quickly through the turns, but this was disallowed in 2014, when he shockingly became the only defending F1 champion to go winless while his teammate (Daniel Ricciardo) won. Racing in traffic was not one of Vettel’s strengths, so he sometimes struggled in slower cars. Having idolized Schumacher at Ferrari, Vettel moved there himself for 2015. Although Ferrari could never compete with Mercedes, Vettel actually delivered some of his best performances there, leading both the 2017 and 2018 championships before Lewis Hamilton eventually overtook him. However, Vettel suddenly declined after Charles Leclerc replaced Räikkönen. Despite being relatively evenly matched in 2019, Leclerc was 20 percentage points faster in 2020, prompting Vettel’s switch to Aston Martin, where he posted two undistinguished seasons before retiring. Outside the cockpit, he was renowned for his climate activism, building bee sanctuaries and campaigning for F1 schedules that minimized carbon emissions.
Vettel’s legacy is now in a bit of an odd place, as Vettel had less longevity than most repeat champions, while future Red Bull driver Max Verstappen broke most of Vettel’s records, making his career appear somewhat more mediocre in hindsight. Nonetheless, he still ranks 4th with 53 wins and in the top five in most other categories. Despite his season-to-season inconsistency, few drivers ever had a higher ceiling as he led my open wheel model four times globally (2008, 2011, 2013, 2017) and twice more amongst F1 drivers (2015-2016). In addition to winning the 2015 Race of Champions, Vettel and Schumacher combined to win that race’s Nations Cup six straight years from 2007-2012; Vettel won again with Pascal Wehrlein in 2017. Ultimately, I put far more emphasis on his peak seasons than his mediocre ones.
Open wheel model: #27 of 931 (.305)
Teammate head-to-heads: 185-101 (6-1 vs. Mikhail Aleshin, 10-0 vs. Sebastien Bourdais, 0-1 vs. Sebastien Buemi, 5-12 vs. Paul di Resta, 1-0 vs. Loic Duval, 0-1 vs. Maro Engel, 12-3 vs. Kamui Kobayashi, 12-17 vs. Charles Leclerc, 1-2 vs. Vitantonio Liuzzi, 41-16 vs. Kimi Raikkonen, 3-11 vs. Daniel Ricciardo, 15-15 vs. Lance Stroll, 12-3 vs. Giedo van der Garde, 56-16 vs. Mark Webber, 11-3 vs. Andreas Wirth)
Year-by-year: 2004: C-, 2006: C-, 2007: C+, 2008: E, 2009: 4, 2010: E, 2011: 1, 2012: E, 2013: 1, 2014: C, 2015: 1, 2016: E, 2017: 2, 2018: E, 2019: E-, 2020: C-, 2021: C, 2022: C