Vettel shrugs off doubts over legacy

london — What is the difference between Sebastian Vettel and Tony McCoy? Or Vettel and Ryan Giggs and Sachin Tendulkar? They are all serial winners and model professionals at the highest levels in their chosen sports. Or have been. Tendulkar is approaching the end of an amazing cricket career littered with statistical landmarks.

Giggs is slipping gently into a coaching role at Manchester United and Tony McCoy’s wife has, jokingly, suggested that after riding 4,000 winners it is time for her to cut up his licence. Vettel, however, remains a very young man and, at 26, obviously has a decade of continued Formula One motor racing ahead of him. He has not yet reached his peak and he has no plans to relent in his insatiable assault on the record books.

Only a few weeks ago, having won the Indian Grand Prix, he joined an elite club of four-time world champions. Ahead of him now lie only the achievements of the sport’s legendary greatest drivers, Michael Schumacher and Juan-Manuel Fangio.

Yet there are those who carp at his feats. Some claim that Vettel must leave his triumphant Red Bull team which has won four consecutive teams’ titles in step with the young German’s reign of supremacy.

This week even the highlyrespected voice of three-time world champion Jackie Stewart was heard decrying Vettel’s claims to be one of the greatest of all. His view was that Vettel had to move to prove himself in more adverse conditions, as Schumacher did in winning five titles with a previously-forlorn Ferrrari after winning two at Benetton. —