He rose up the ranks so quickly, has had such precociously good results since he began racing in Formula One in 2007, that there did not seem to be enough time to digest how much was his talent and how much was the doing of his car.
One thing became certain this year, however, and that was he possessed an extraordinary maturity. It was only after the race in Suzuka that Vettel suddenly looked a little like a slightly lost kid at the front of the class.
“There are so many things you want to say in this moment, but it is hard to remember all of them,” he said after winning the title. “It’s as confusing as the first one, I should say, so it is hard to find the right words.”
Others, though, did not have a problem pinpointing what let him dominate this year.
“He is the most mature 24-year-old that I have ever seen in motor sport,” said Jackie Stewart, a three-time world champion from the 1960s and 1970s. “He has a maturity about him, in his driving, whether it be in the wet or the dry. He seldom ever overdrives.”
He added that Vettel also had the control of his emotions that a driver needs to avoid silly mistakes, even though the German driver nearly committed them at the beginning and the end of the race Sunday.
He entered the race needing only one point to win the title, or hope that his last rival, Jenson Button, of McLaren Mercedes, did not win every race. At the start, Button attacked, and Vettel defended so harshly that he sent the British driver precariously into the grass at the side of the track. At the end of the race, with Button leading, Vettel attacked aggressively to try to take second place from Fernando Alonso, and it occasionally looked like the series leader might crash out.
In the end, Button won the race, his third of the season, and Vettel finished in third place, taking the title with his second-worst finish this year. He finished first or second in every race except his home race in Germany in July, in which he finished fourth.
Records for youth are being broken with almost every new champion, from Alonso, who in 2006 had set the previous record as the youngest two-time world champion at age 25; to Lewis Hamilton, who was the youngest champion, at age 23 in 2008; to Vettel, who also was 23 when he won his first title, but was about six months younger. But the manner in which Vettel has now won his titles has impressed even his fellow drivers.
“At the moment, he is the benchmark,” said Heikki Kovalainen, a driver at Team Lotus. “This year, Vettel has been the best out there. After that, you can speculate who has the best car.”
Having had support throughout his career from the Red Bull energy drink company, for which he races, Vettel was used to growing up pampered, from go-karting to the highest level of racing. Early on, there were times when he appeared impatient if things did not go his way, like when he caused a collision with his teammate, Mark Webber, at the Turkish Grand Prix last year that knocked both of them off the track and cost Webber the victory.
Certainly, there were times he got victories because he had such a strong team backing him. But not for his first victory, at the inferior Toro Rosso team in 2008, when he won the Italian Grand Prix at Monza in the rain, giving that team its first and only victory.
This favours drivers such as Jenson Button, who is adept at thinking on his feet and reacting to what is happening during a race.
Button met his match in Monaco, where Vettel made a bold call to stay out for 56 laps on a set of balding prime tyres, gambling that no one would be able to pass him.
He was right. A late accident meant Vettel was able to switch to a set of soft tyres before the end anyway. A very intelligent drive.
3. He has blown Webber away
Some people forget that Mark Webber went into the final race of 2010, in Abu Dhabi, with a better chance of winning the championship than Vettel.
The Australian had fought all year with the young German and had won numerous on- and off-track battles.
This year Vettel has been on a different planet. Crucially, he was quicker getting up to speed with the new Pirelli tyres and the 12-3 qualifying record tells its own story.
Webber has not become a slow driver overnight. In fact, he was always known as something of a one-lap specialist. Vettel has simply upped his game and blown the Australian away.
4. Consistency
Red Bull threw away a mountain of points last year because of issues of car reliability and driver error.
Vettel was not blameless in the latter department; he made several poor starts; lost concentration in Hungary behind the safety car earning a drive-through; and got involved in enough collisions for McLaren team principal Martin Whitmarsh to dub him the Crash Kid.
How ironic that name sounds now in light of Hamilton’s recent travails.
Vettel has been largely faultless this year, albeit no one has got close enough to apply real pressure.
He has crashed three times in Friday practice but came back to win two of those grands prix, while his brief ‘off’ on the final lap in Canada, gifting the win to Button, was just about his only notable in-race mistake.
5. Maturity
Vettel was only 23 when he became Formula One’s youngest world champion.
And while he has not grown up in quite the same goldfish bowl as the previous holder of that record, Hamilton, Vettel was, like the Englishman, groomed for stardom since the age of 13.
It would have been easy to get a little big-headed.
There were occasions in 2010, notably when Webber was enjoying a purple patch around the time of Spain-Monaco-Turkey, when Vettel lost his cool, culminating in him waving his finger around his head as if to say Webber was crazy after their collision in Istanbul.
Yes, he has been under little pressure this year but he has at all times appeared grounded, humble and good humoured.
A worthy world champion.
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