Vettel Adds Brazil to His Winning Streak

SÃO PAULO — The ear-shattering, screaming orchestra of 22 of the world’s most powerful normally-aspirated, 2.4 liter, V8 engines howled around a Formula One racetrack for the last time in competition on Sunday.

The Brazilian Grand Prix was not only the last race of yet another Formula One season dominated by Sebastian Vettel, who took his fourth title at the wheel of a Red Bull. It was the end of an eight-year era in which his Red Bull, and all the other 21 cars, were powered by the same kind of engine.

Vettel once again dominated the race — this time from the second lap to the finish, after being briefly passed by Nico Rosberg in a Mercedes — to take his ninth victory in a row this season, and to equal the all-time record of consecutive victories, which Alberto Ascari set in 1952-53 over two seasons. He also equaled the record set by Michael Schumacher in 2004 for the most victories in a single season, with 13 victories.

“Yes! We did it! This is unbelievable,” Vettel shouted over his team radio after the race.

“I am actually quite sad that this season has come to an end,” he said a few minutes later, on the victory podium. “To win every race was unbelievable.”

Mark Webber, Vettel’s teammate at Red Bull, finished the race in second, 10.4 seconds behind, while Fernando Alonso finished third in a Ferrari, 18.9 seconds behind Vettel.

Again on the victory podium, Vettel was very quick to thank the people that made his victories possible: “A big thank you to the team, and a thank you to Renault.”

Vettel was driving a car powered by the most successful engine in the current era, the Renault.

Next season begins a new era of turbo-charged, 1.6 liter, six-cylinder hybrid engines using complex energy recuperation devices for both kinetic and heat engines.

Paradoxically, while some critics fear that the next generation of engines will not produce a similar deafening, but exciting assault on eardrums to that of the V8s, the engines that have powered these cars for the past eight seasons have attracted very little attention.

As a cost-cutting measure in the series, the International Automobile Federation, the series’ governing body, outlawed almost all modification of the engines during that period, and most of the focus of the winning cars was spent on the aerodynamics and other technological innovations.

In fact, the most victorious engine of them all during that period was also one of probably the least talked about. The Renault not only dominated the last four seasons in the Red Bull, it won the title 2006 powering the Renault chassis driven by Fernando Alonso.

During those eight years, the Renault engine won five constructors’ and drivers’ titles (2006-2010-2011-2012-2013). It won 60 races scored 56 pole positions.

“The V8 was the era of how to make a car faster using everything except the pure power of an engine,” said Rémi Taffin, the head of track operations for Renault sport. “So we’ve learned a lot of different skills, such as better integration, greater fuel economy and how to use the auxiliary facets such as the exhausts to a much greater extent.”

But its competitors included the engine manufacturers Ferrari and Mercedes, which built both chassis and engine, and thus ensured the best integration possible of the engine to the chassis.

Also on the grid during that time was the much less noticeable Cosworth engine that powered some of the smaller teams, like Marussia this season, and failed to win a race during that time. The race in Brazil on Sunday also marked the end of the Cosworth engine in Formula One, as it will not be providing any teams with the new engine next year.

Although Cosworth’s most recent foray into the series was far from successful, it has a long history of racing in the series, back to the 1960s, and it remains the second most victorious engine provider in the series — behind Ferrari – with 176 victories. Unfortunately, the last Cosworth victory dates to the lucky victory at the Brazilian Grand Prix of 2003, when it powered Giancarlo Fisichella to victory in a race cut short by dangerous rains. It scored its last lucky pole position in 2010, when it powered Nico Hülkenberg to pole position at the track in Brazil in the rain and powering a Williams car.

“The race will bring the curtain down on the sport’s current set of technical regulations, and will immediately send us busily into the winter as we start to prepare for a new era of turbocharging and energy recovery,” said Martin Whitmarsh, the director of the McLaren Mercedes team.

“It’s an exciting time for the sport — but also a nerve-wracking period for every team as we come to terms with a daunting array of new variables and permutations.”

Rob White, the director of the Renault racing engine program, assured, however, that while the V8 has a distinctive howl that cannot be repeated by the smaller turbo engine, the new engines will continue to have the distinctive sound of their lightning fast gears changing.

The sound will hearken back to an earlier time of the series, in the 1980s of the previous turbo era.

Monday Motorsports: Vettel Closes Out History-Making Formula One Season

Sebastian Vettel ended the 2013 Formula One campaign in dominant fashion on Sunday at the season finale in Brazil, scoring a strong victory over his Red Bull Infiniti teammate, Mark Webber, and Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso. Vettel, 26, had already secured his fourth straight World Championship; Alonso was a distant runnerup in the points battle.

The victory was Vettel’s 13th for the season, tying a record held by Michael Schumacher. And it was also Vettel’s ninth victory in a row in the same season, a new Formula One record; Alberto Ascari also won nine grand prix races in a row, but it was over two seasons, the last six races of the 1952 season and the first three in 1953.

The race marked the end of Webber’s Formula One career; he has announced plans to race factory-backed Porsches in sports car endurance events starting next year.

The 2014 Formula One season begins March 16 in Australia.

In other racing news from the weekend:

¦ The Audi drivers Stéphane Ortelli and Laurens Vanthoor were crowned champions of the 2013 Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile GT Series, with their victory in the season finale on Sunday on a street circuit in Baku, Azerbaijan.

Sebastien Loeb and Alvaro Parente, co-drivers in a McLaren MP4 12C, finished fourth on the track, but were elevated to second place in the official posting of the race results after 10-second penalties were assessed the original second and third place finishers.

¦ Andrew Palmer, a 19-year-old from Chicago, planned to return to classes at Pomona College in Claremont, Calif., on Monday much like he has throughout this term. Yet, something is now very different in his life: Palmer is now a world champion.

In a somewhat unlikely outcome, Palmer competed over the weekend in the World Finals of the Lamborghini Blancpain Super Trofeo series, held in Rome. He finished second in the first race of the doubleheader format, won the second race and scored enough points to collect the championship title.

What was so unlikely about that?

For one, the races were held in the rain, conditions in which Palmer said he had little experience, especially compared with some of the other seasoned professionals who qualified for the event.

For another, Palmer took up auto racing only in October. That’s when he won a race in his debut weekend at Virginia International Raceway, in Alton, Va., which qualified him for the World Finals.

“It’s a surreal feeling to be world champion,” said Palmer, who became interested in auto racing through go-karting. “I am not sure the reality has really sunk in just yet.”

He added that returning to his math and economics classes this week was going to be “quite weird.”

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: Monday Motorsports: Vettel, Johnson, Castroneves Score Weekend Racing Wins

Rogerio Barbosa/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Sebastian Vettel leading the race at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal on Sunday.

Sebastian Vettel made easy work of the competition to win Sunday’s Formula One race in Montreal. Vettel’s victory extended his lead in the championship points standings over Kimi Raikkonen, who finished ninth after a trouble-plagued race. Fernando Alonso finished second and also moved ahead of Raikkonen in points. Lewis Hamilton was third.

Hamilton led three early laps, when Vettel made a pit stop. Otherwise, the race was all Vettel.

After the race, it was announced that a course worker had been killed during the event when a recovery vehicle removing a disabled car from the course ran him over.

In other racing news:

• Jimmie Johnson proved unstoppable Sunday in the Nascar Sprint Cup event at Pocono Raceway in Pennsylvania. Greg Biffle said he considered himself fortunate to finish second, 1.2 seconds behind. Dale Earnhardt Jr. was third and Tony Stewart and Ryan Newman rounded out the top five.

It was Johnson’s 63rd career victory in the series, and helped him pad his lead in the points standings as he campaigns for a sixth championship. Only Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt, with seven championships each, have won more titles.

• Helio Castroneves, known for climbing the fence between the race track and the grandstands after his victories, was up to his old routine again after winning Saturday’s IndyCar series Firestone 550 at Texas Motor Speedway.

It was first victory of the year for Castroneves, but his consistency through the eight races in the series so far this year has him atop the point standings, ahead of Marco Andretti, who came in fifth at Texas.

Ryan Hunter-Reay came in second Saturday, followed by Tony Kanaan and Ed Carpenter.

Jean Francois Monier/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images The Audi R18 E-Tron Quattro Hybrid driven by Loïc Duval competes during the test day of the 90th Le Mans 24 hours endurance race.

• Loïc Duval, driving an Audi R18 E-Tron Quattro, was fastest Sunday in a two-segment practice day at the Circuit de la Sarthe in Le Mans, France. The practice was a major tune-up for this year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans, which will be held June 22-23.

Duval crashed in the morning session, but came back in the afternoon stint to post a stunningly fast time. He was three seconds faster than the next driver on the time sheets, Lucas di Grassi, who was also driving an Audi. Third quickest was Andre Lotterer in another Audi.

No further on-track activity is scheduled for the entries until the days immediately preceding the classic endurance event, which in 2013 is celebrating its 90th anniversary.

• The noted land speed racing pioneer Walt Arfons, who also developed jet-powered race cars as well as the parachutes needed to stop them, died June 4 at age 96 in an Akron, Ohio, hospital, a family member confirmed last week.

Arfons, who, along with half-brother Art and later with Craig Breedlove, traded many speed records in the 1950s and 1960s, was a self-taught engineer and inventor. His fascination with speed led him purchase a war surplus jet and try to adapt its power to land speed racing. It was a dangerous endeavor that resulted in many crashes, injuries and scrapes with death, but his so-called “Green Monster” cars became racing icons.

His perfection of jet engine use in racing also led him to adopt the now widely used drogue parachutes that safely stop drag racing machines.

Art Arfons, with whom Walt Arfons had a falling-out over safety concerns in their head-to-head duels, died in 2007. Walt’ son, Craig, was killed going for a speed record in a powerboat in 1989.