Taking any opportunity to get stuck into Sebastian Vettel is something most Australians like to indulge in. Until this year we’ve been used to seeing young Seb toy with our Mark as the young charge did as he pleased with the best car on the grid.
So far 2014 has been a nightmare for Vettel. In addition to having a relatively poor car, where poor equals not streets ahead of the competition, Sebastian has had to deal with the arrival of another pesky Australian. This time, though, Vettel is in the senior role and Daniel Ricciardo is playing the part of precocious upstart.
And isn’t our Daniel playing that role well! In the intra-team battle Ricciardo is currently dominating Vettel in much the same way the German dominated Mark Webber in previous years. Not only has Daniel chalked up his first grand prix win, he’s allowed some of the more biased Aussie F1 fans (erm, that would be us, and probably you too) to take their VettelĂ‚Â schadenfreude to new levels.
So when we saw this article on the BBC website titled “Sebastian Vettel says Formula 1 can be ‘very cruel'” we were ready to laugh and poke fun at Seb.
Yet, when you read Vettel’s full quote in context it doesn’t seem to be a whinge at all, rather a statement of fact:
It’s been a tough start, a rough season so far. F1 can be fantastic, as I have experience of, but it can be very cruel in retiring from problems. You rely on your car. It is part of the game.
Keep reading and the article is pretty level headed stuff from the four-time world champion. And then you stumble across these words which Vettel says he reminds himself of from time to time and you realise, hey, maybe he’s not such an arsehole after all:
I have one quote I very often read to myself, from a very good friend: ‘Forget the people around you now; remember the little boy who was racing in go-karts, what you were dreaming of and what he wanted to achieve one day and what was his goal. Race for him.’
[Source: BBC | Pic: Red Bull/Getty Images]