The New Red Baron

Sebastian Vettel is already dubbed by the German media as “Baby Schumi” and he won his first race in a rain interrupted race in Monza of all the places for the Toro Rosso team last year. His win was not only the first win for the former Minardi team which been the perennial backmarker of F1 since 1985 but he also became the youngest F1 race winner by more than a year.

Vettel had a very impressive junior career and it was during the 2006 season that he came into the limelight when BMW team promoted Kubica their then Friday driver to a race seat and Vettel to that of the Friday driver. Kubica throughout the season was very impressive during his Friday drivers and Vettel immediately showed that he is as good or if not even better than Kubica and pulled off some very impressive times on the BMW.

He made his F1 debut for the BMW team during the 2007 season as a substitute for Kubica during the US GP and he scored his first points and he became the youngest driver in F1 to score points. Later on that season he joined the Toro Rosso team replacing Scott Speed for the remainder of the season. He did score his first points for the team in China by finishing 4th.

2008 would be the breakthrough year for Vettel as he inspired the Toro Rosso team to its best ever season by not only winning the Italian GP but also scored a string of consistent performance that he finished 8th in the driver’s championship and the team finished an all time high of 6th in the driver’s championship finishing ahead of teams like Red Bull Racing, Williams and Honda.

Ever since his victory in Monza where the German national anthem was heard along with the Italian national anthem for the first time since 2006 when Michael Schumacher announced his retirement, there has been speculation that he will be driving a Ferrari in the future. Also ironically he won his first race with a Ferrari engine for an Italian team.

This season he is 2nd in the driver’s championship and currently seem be the only person capable of challenging Jenson Button and his Brawn GP car. Though Red Bull has backed him for long and he was promoted as a lead driver for the RBR team after his phenomenol performance with the STR team during the last season and even though this year RBR seem to have a package of winning the titles, they still remain an independent team and will never have the resources that Ferrari will have.

Every driver’s dream is to drive for Ferrari, just ask Jean Alesi in the 90’s he had an option for driving for the vastly superior Williams or the McLaren team but his heart ruled over his head and instead of becoming a former world champion, he drove for the underperforming Ferrari and finished his career as a good driver but not among the greats. Well those were the dark days for Ferrari and though Ferrari is going thru a horrible time now, it will surly bounce back and if Vettel dreams of winning multiple world championships and come close in breaking the original Red Baron’s record of 7 world championships well Ferrari is the team which can offer Vettel the chance and well all hope by 2011, the Young bull would become the new Red Baron.