Vettel fires up “Potere Rosso”

LONDON: Sebastian Vettel has won plenty of races, but the German’s one-two victory in Monaco was of special significance for Ferrari fans starved of success.

The last time the Italian team won in the Mediterranean principality was 16 years ago in 2001 with Vettel’s compatriot Michael Schumacher leading a one-two.

Schumacher ended a similar 16-year Ferrari drought in Monaco in 1997 with a victory that followed Gilles Villeneuve’s 1981 triumph.

Villeneuve, Schumacher, Vettel. The roll call is spinetingling but results are what really matter and a comparison of Schumacher’s first six races of 2001 and Vettel’s current performance will get the heart racing at Maranello.

Schumacher - who ended the season with his fourth title - won the opener in Australia that year, as did Vettel this. He took two more wins and two second places with one retirement.

Vettel is doing better with three wins and three second places, and makes a plausible argument that Ferrari could have won every race this year had everything gone to plan.

What happened in Australia has become a sequence of success that has re-arranged the Formula One landscape with champions Mercedes already presenting themselves as underdogs.

The contrast between last season, when Formula One’s oldest and most successful team failed to win a race and Vettel made headlines with radio rants, is marked.

The German is 25 points clear of Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton, the British threetimes world champion who has won twice but struggled to get performance into his car’s Pirelli tyres.

The front page headline of the national sports daily was “Potere Rosso” (Red Power).

The German’s celebrations in Monaco were reminiscent of the glory years when Schumacher dominated the Italian team and had everyone back at base singing to his tune.

Vettel was the conductor as the Ferrari mechanics and engineers sang the Italian anthem. Kimi Raikkonen, rather like Schumacher’s team mate Rubens Barrichello, looked a lot less happy.

“We got a lot of hard times last year and this year everything seems to be upside down - but the team is the same, the people are the same,” Vettel told reporters.

“I guess in these small moments you just realise that it’s a special group of people.

“I think you can see when the guys are singing the Italian anthem. I think it’s impossible not to get goosebumps and feel very special standing up there representing them.”