On Track and Off, Vettel Sets His Own Pace

Vettel, a 26-year-old German, is the youngest driver to score points in Formula One, the youngest Grand Prix winner and the youngest world champion. He has already clinched this year’s world championship, his fourth in a row, with a record-tying 11 victories, including one in which the nearest competitor finished 30 seconds behind. In 118 Grand Prix starts, he has won 37 times, bettering even Tiger Woods, who won 34 of 130 PGA Tour starts before turning 27.   

Vettel wastes no time in his car, but away from the cockpit he is constantly running behind. On Thursday, three days before the United States Grand Prix, Vettel lost so much ground in his morning appearances that at the stroke of noon his handlers’ smartphones began to ping with alarms.

The same intellectual curiosity that drives his success on the track impedes his progress off it. His television interviews exceeded their allotted time because he asked so many questions, a quick meet-and-greet with a contest winner turned into another unhurried exchange, and a photo shoot that was scheduled to last 10 minutes took almost an hour because Vettel was not wired to be a passive participant.

If he could be granted one wish, he once said, it would be that people were a little less stressed, starting presumably with those in his inner circle. On Thursday, as Vettel’s appointments rammed into one another like cars on a track, his personal assistant, Britta Roeske, tapped out replies on her smartphone to Vettel’s trainer, who was furious that he had not stopped for lunch, and to the engineers, who were threatening to start a scheduled meeting without him.

Vettel’s mind has many gears, none of which are neutral. In conversation he shifts from one detail to another until a vast terrain is covered. Adrian Newey, who designed Vettel’s car, said, “He can drive while considering and planning what he’s going to do next, and then get out of the car and continue to analyze and learn what happened so that next time he’s got that tiny bit more knowledge.”

Outsiders have a hard time seeing the man for the machine. Many drivers in the glamour-rich, cash-poor sport attribute Vettel’s success to his Red Bull Infiniti partnership, as if he were behind the wheel of a Brink’s truck.

Scott Dixon, who last month won his third IndyCar Series championship, said jokingly that Vettel’s dominance was making Formula One boring.

“Somebody was telling me the other night after they won the championship, what they need to do is have all the drivers put their keys in a bowl and then you pick out the keys and drive that car,” Dixon said.

Mark Webber, a Red Bull teammate with whom Vettel has clashed, said: “The car is a big part of it, but it’s not everything. His attention to the small details is what sets him apart.”

 With a victory Sunday, Vettel would become the first Formula One drive to win eight consecutive races in a season and would supplant his childhood idol and countryman Michael Schumacher as the single-season victory leader.

The pursuit of history, Vettel said, “is not the reason why I jump in the car.” The pursuit of happiness is what drives him.

“To be honest with you, I just love what I do,” he said. “I love getting in the car. The feeling I get inside the car and the level of satisfaction, I haven’t found anything else that makes me as happy.”

A Desire to Win

Vettel, open-wheel racing’s leading man, is the most famous athlete most Americans have never heard of, so he was not sure what reception awaited him during his first visit to Nashville, the site of Nissan-Infiniti’s North American headquarters.

“You have low expectations when you come here,” Vettel said, referring to the United States, “because you don’t know how much people know about Formula One.”

Wheels Blog: Taking a Spin Around a Dirt Track in a Pro Lite Unlimited Racing Truck

Mike Caudill/Driven PR This Pro Lite Unlimited race truck is powered by a 347-cubic-inch Ford V-8.

LAKE ELSINORE, Calif. – Casey Currie drummed in one message last Friday during our laps around the track at Lake Elsinore Motorsports Park: “Slow! Slow down! Slow into the turn!” Currie, 29, who has motorcycles and Baja 1000 trucks, had good reason to worry.

After he had first showed me around the five-turn, about 1.1-mile course, we switched places. Now I had the wheel of this beastly Pro Lite Unlimited truck, a two-seat demonstrator that was otherwise comparable to single-seat entries in the Lucas Oil Off Road Racing Series, which competed here over the weekend.

Naturally, I envisioned soaring over the jumps, touching down on all four wheels and pitching sideways into each turn, where I would find the cushion on lightly packed dirt and shoot forward for the next suborbital launch.

But Currie communicated a healthy respect for the truck’s potency, its 2,800-pound mass, and its willingness to roll over if mishandled. He also stressed that the highly technical business of flying over jumps shouldn’t invite a cavalier attitude, lest we land on our chins or tailbones.

In fact, just before I had strapped into the driver’s seat and hooked my helmet to the truck’s intercom system, another driver in a 300-horsepower truck had gone end-over-end. Fortunately, he appeared to be uninjured after the wreck.

Mike Caudill/Driven PR Casey Currie, 29, was a little nervous about a journalist’s relative lack of experience behind the wheel of a racing truck.

For a reporter to get behind the wheel was unprecedented, so why was he letting me drive the truck? “I’m not sure,” he said, hardly able to hide his skepticism. “Have you ever driven on a track?”

My naming some big ones didn’t seem to allay his concerns about my ability. The fact is that he was stuck with a writer almost twice his age behind the wheel; the recent accident had clearly upset him.

While he was still strapped in, I nudged onto the track. As soon as the engine had fired up, normal conversation became impossible, but through the speakers inside my helmet Currie told me everything that could go wrong.

The truck’s lack of a windshield allowed me to see, ever so clearly, how imposing the jump hills looked. Rattling around in the back of my brain was a speech  that Rich Unferdorfer, the racing series fire safety director, had given at the drivers’ meeting. Flame-retardant socks were strongly encouraged, he had said.

Mike Caudill/Driven PR Ronald Ahrens, the author of this post, gets some wheel time.

Meanwhile, even though I’d bitten into my right cheek on a jump during Currie’s demonstration lap, I felt relaxed and comfortable in the racing seat. Cozied up to my right knee, throwing off a fair amount of heat through its sheet metal covering, the throbbing 347-cubic-inch Ford V-8 begged to go racing.

Reviewers of new cars might talk about instantaneous response, but boldly shooting forward in this rig required just one more red blood cell in my big toe. Everything about the truck reflected its intent to extend the driver’s reflexes. The steering had eye-blink directness. The tread of the big tires offered plenty of bite. And without 4-wheel drive, the truck’s rear-end wanted to swivel right around so we could power-slide through the corners.

“These ruts could make us roll over,” Currie said, breathing shallowly, as we entered a turn. “Are you braking?”

We seemed to be crawling, and I’d hardly touched the brakes on the first lap.

“Use the brakes,” he said.

Mike Caudill/Driven PR One of the turns at the Lake Elsinore Motorsports Park in California.

Noticing the white flag waving, he expressed astonishment that we had been granted a third lap (and then another, which seemed almost endless, for a wholly unneeded cool-down).

I turned off the track, docile to the last. At least I hadn’t lost control and ruined someone’s day.

Mike Caudill/Driven PR Ronald Ahrens drives a racing truck at the Lake Elsinore Motorsports Park in California.