Special contributor：Edd Straw

文献：艾德·斯图瓦

塞巴斯蒂安·维特尔是如何被记住的——他到底有多优异？

How should Sebastian Vettel be remembered – and how good was he really?

Statistics don’t measure greatness, but Sebastian Vettel’s four world championships, 53 victories and 57 pole positions automatically qualify him for that status. The only question is one of magnitude, of how great he is. We can now attempt to answer following his Formula 1 retirement.

Vettel’s career trajectory is curious. A meteoric rise through the junior ranks, almost-immediate success with an unheralded Toro Rosso team then, before the age of 27, he’d produced the vast majority of his F1 success with Red Bull.

When Vettel triggered his release clause to join Ferrari for 2015 after a winless campaign as Red Bull floundered at the start of the V6 turbo hybrid era, success seemed written in the stars. Just as his mentor Michael Schumacher’s early success with Benetton was simply a prelude to his glory days with Ferrari, Vettel’s Red Bull stint might merely have been the preamble to something amazing.

But his six years at Maranello disappointed, followed by a cathartic but, in terms of results, unsuccessful two years with Aston Martin. To measure Vettel’s greatness, first one must weigh up the two parts of this unbalanced career.

统计数字不能衡量伟大，但塞巴斯蒂安·维特尔的四次世界锦标赛、53次胜利和57个杆位使他获得了这一地位。唯一的问题是他有多伟大，这是一个重要的问题。我们现在可以尝试在他一级方程式赛车退役后回答这个问题。

维特尔的职业轨迹令人好奇。他在初级队伍中迅速崛起，在一支默默无闻的红牛二队中几乎立即取得了成功，然后在27岁之前，他在红牛车队取得了F1的绝大部分成功。

当维特尔在V6涡轮混合动力时代开始时，红牛陷入困境，经历了一场失败的赛季之后，他在2015年加入法拉利车队时，成功似乎写在了星辉上。正如他的导师迈克尔·舒马赫在贝纳通的早期成功只是他在法拉利（Ferrari）辉煌岁月的前奏一样，维特尔（Vetel）在红牛车队（Red Bull）的表现可能只是一件令人惊叹的事的前奏。

但他在马拉内罗的六年让人失望，随后是一场离别，但就结果而言，他在阿斯顿·马丁的两年不成功。要衡量维特尔的伟大，首先必须权衡这个不平衡职业生涯的两个部分。

Early Vettel (2007-2013) was a phenomenon. Speak to those who worked with him as he ascended from karting hopeful to superstar and the message is consistent. Yes, he was fast, but there are many quick drivers. What marked Vettel out was his attention to detail, his dedication, the determination to leave no stone unturned. Schumacher was the prototypical modern, all-round driver, and Vettel followed his lead to the letter.

“Many drivers have the skills, the talent,” says Franz Tost, Vettel’s team boss at Scuderia Toro Rosso in 2007-8. “In the past, there were a couple of drivers from the speed, only from the speed, that could have won the championship.

“But they were either stupid or something else. They couldn’t get it together because they didn’t understand the ingredients you must bring together to become a successful driver.”

早期的维特尔（2007-2013）有一种现象。当他从卡丁车有望晋升为超级明星时，与那些与他共事的人交谈，传达的信息是一致的。是的，他跑得很快，但有很多速度很快的司机。维特尔与众不同的是他对细节的关注，他的奉献精神，以及不遗余力的决心。舒马赫是典型的现代全能车手，维特尔紧随其后。

“很多车手都有技术和天赋，”维特尔车队老板弗朗茨·托斯特在2007-2008赛季的红牛二队说道。

“但他们要么是愚蠢的，要么是别的什么。他们无法把它们结合起来，因为他们不了解成为一名成功车手所必须具备的要素。”

Tost is characteristically brutal, but accurate. Many drivers take years to embrace this reality, some never do, but Vettel was already there even before he got to F1. Speak to Frederic Vasseur, now Ferrari Team Principal but then running the ASM Formula 3 squad that Vettel raced for in 2006, and he says a similar thing. Vettel had a voracious appetite for self-improvement.

That’s something reflected in his approach once he was the finished article in F1. During the Toro Rosso years, he built great understanding of his driving, deconstructing it and grasping what he needed to be quick. A strong front end, a stable rear that he rotated with confidence on corner entry, and Vettel was dynamite. He carried that into his Red Bull years.

投掷的特点是野蛮，但准确。许多车手需要数年的时间来接受这一现实，有些人从未这样做过，但维特尔甚至在进入F1之前就已经在那里了。请与弗雷德里克·瓦瑟交谈，他现在是法拉利车队的负责人，但当时是维特尔在2006年竞选的ASM三级方程式车队的队长，他说了类似的话。维特尔渴望自我提升。

这一点反映在他在F1完成文章后的方法中。在红牛二队的岁月里，他对自己的驾驶有了深刻的理解，对其进行了解构，并掌握了快速驾驶所需的东西。一个强大的前端，一个稳定的后方，他在进入角球时充满信心地旋转，维特尔是个炸药。他把这一点带到了他的红牛时代。

There, like all great drivers, he made superb machinery better. Exhaust-blown aero existed in various forms across Vettel’s four title-winning years in 2010-13, but it was his diligence and excellence in adapting his technique that made the most of it.

The throttle wasn’t only a means to deliver power to the wheels, but also as a gasflow pump to create aeroload. At times, that required the adoption of a counter-intuitive technique, one that gave the car more downforce and, crucially, delivered it in a way and at a time Vettel required to give him the rear end he needed. There were echoes of Ayrton Senna’s legendary throttle-pumping technique in what Vettel did – it was that good.

This was peak Vettel, racking up seemingly endless pole positions and dominant wins. While usually these were the lead-from-the-front triumphs demanded by a car that generally carried more downforce and therefore drag than rivals, there were also wins from behind, notably passing Fernando on the grass at Monza to win in 2011 and recovering to sixth to clinch the title at Interlagos in ’12 after clashing with Bruno Senna on the opening lap.

Vettel was no one-trick pony. The Vettel during this period was genuinely outstanding, comparable with the best four-year spells of the legends.

在那里，和所有伟大的车手一样，他把高超的机械开得更好。2010年至2013年，维特尔的四年夺冠生涯中都存在着各种形式的排气气流，但正是他在调整技术方面的勤奋和卓越成就了这一成就。

节气门不仅是向车轮提供动力的一种手段，也是一种产生空气负荷的气流泵。有时，这需要采用一种反直觉的技术，一种给汽车更大下压力的技术，关键的是，以某种方式传递它，而维特尔则需要给他所需的后端。在维特尔所做的事情中，有艾尔顿·塞纳传奇式的油门抽油技术的回声——这很好。

这是维特尔的巅峰时刻，取得了看似无止境的杆位和统治性的胜利。虽然通常情况下，这是一辆通常比对手承受更大下压力，因此阻力更大的赛车所要求的正面胜利的领先优势，但也有来自后面的胜利，特别是在2011年蒙扎的草地上超越费尔南多赢得胜利，并在12年的因特拉戈斯与布鲁诺·塞纳在首圈发生冲突后恢复到第六位，夺得冠军。

维特尔并不是一匹会耍花招的小马。在这段时间里，维特尔真的非常出色，可以和传奇中最好的四年时间相提并论。

But there were moments during this era that hinted at the frailties to come. There were mistakes, particularly in 2010, and the controversies with team mate Mark Webber, that foreshadowed what was to come in his Ferrari years.

After being outperformed by new team mate Daniel Ricciardo in 2014 – a season during which Vettel performed better than most remember and suffered more than his fair share of car problems, but which was nonetheless below par – there came the move to Ferrari.

It started wonderfully, with a first victory second time out in Malaysia and three victories in a year of recovery for Ferrari. But the inherent instability of Ferrari had already been exposed by the fact Luca di Montezemolo, who had been instrumental in the German’s recruitment, left before Vettel even arrived.

The peak of Vettel’s Ferrari years were 2017 and ’18. In the first of those years, he was neck-and-neck with Lewis Hamilton heading into the final seven races of the season. But at the start of the Singapore Grand Prix, he triggered an accident that eliminated both Ferraris and Max Verstappen. Ferrari’s reliability problems likely would have made it difficult to close out that title push, but the Singapore result shattered Vettel’s momentum.

但在这个时代，有一些时刻暗示了未来的脆弱。有一些失误，特别是在2010年，以及与队友马克·韦伯的争议，预示着他在法拉利时代的未来。

在2014年被新队友丹尼尔·里卡多击败之后——在这个赛季里，维特尔的表现比大多数人记忆中的都要好，遭遇了比他应得的更多的汽车问题，但这仍然低于标准——于是他转会到了法拉利车队。

比赛开始得很精彩，在马来西亚第二次取得了第一场胜利，法拉利在一年的恢复期内取得了三场胜利。但法拉利内在的不稳定性已经暴露出来，事实上，在德国人招募过程中发挥了重要作用的卢卡·迪·蒙特泽莫罗在维特尔到来之前就离开了。

维特尔在法拉利的巅峰时期是2017年和18年。在这两年的头几年，他与刘易斯·汉密尔顿在本赛季的最后七场比赛中并驾齐驱。但在新加坡大奖赛开始时，他引发了一场事故，淘汰了法拉利和马克斯·维斯塔潘。法拉利的可靠性问题很可能会使冠军争夺战难以结束，但新加坡的结果粉碎了维特尔的势头。

However, losing his cool and deliberately sideswiping Hamilton under the Safety Car at Baku was the more revealing incident. It was an extraordinary moment of aggression, one that couldn’t be excused by his annoyance at what he saw as Hamilton’s shenanigans building up to the restart, and something entirely out of kilter with Vettel’s affable, easy-going character. Even Vettel seemed to struggle to come to terms with his own inexcusable actions.

In 2018, the Ferrari was a stronger all-round car but Vettel made too many mistakes. Sliding off while leading in tricky conditions at Hockenheim is regarded as the moment the season went wrong for Vettel – and it was a blow – but the error rate in races was too high beyond that.

And those errors were telling. At Red Bull, they happened but not with this frequency, and the environment and volatility of Ferrari clearly didn’t work well for Vettel. He felt at odds with team management, particularly in later years, and didn’t react well to the challenge posed by new team mate Charles Leclerc.

Inevitably, that led to Ferrari deciding not to renew his contract for 2021. The Vettel at Aston Martin seemed a happier, more relaxed character and, while still inconsistent, he regularly produced performances that had vanished in his final Ferrari year.

然而，失去冷静并故意在巴库的安全车下擦身而过的汉密尔顿是更具揭露性的事件。这是一个非同寻常的时刻，他对汉密尔顿在比赛重启前的恶作剧感到恼火，这与维特尔和蔼可亲、随和的性格完全不符。甚至维特尔似乎也很难接受自己不可原谅的行为。

2018年，法拉利有一款更强大的全能车，但维特尔犯了太多错误。在霍根海姆艰难的情况下领先时滑下被认为是维特尔赛季出错的时刻——这是一个打击——但比赛中的失误率太高了。

这些错误很明显。在红牛车队，它们发生了，但并不是这样的频率，法拉利车队的环境和波动显然对维特尔来说并不好。他感到与球队管理层不和，特别是在后来的几年，对新队友查尔斯·勒克莱尔提出的挑战反应不佳。

不可避免的是，这导致法拉利决定不续签2021的合同。阿斯顿·马丁的维特尔似乎是一个更快乐、更放松的角色，虽然仍然不稳定，但他经常表现出在法拉利最后一年中消失的表现。

So which is the real Vettel? The fact that that’s the obvious question is symptomatic of the one weakness, which is that he required a narrow set of conditions – both in terms of his environment and car dynamics – to be at his brilliant best. Then, he was as good as anyone has ever been.

Outside of that window, Vettel was a more erratic performer – a trait magnified by being seduced by the understandable allure at Ferrari that plunged him into an environment that was very different to the one he thrived in at Red Bull.

Vettel was a flawed genius, perhaps one of the most human of the great champions in F1. That’s what made him so popular, even if the emotional volatility did sometimes boil over.

While not a man for all seasons, he deserves to be remembered at his brilliant best, doing seemingly impossible things with Red Bull machinery.

那么哪个才是真正的维特尔？事实上，这是一个明显的问题，这表明了他的一个弱点，即他需要一套狭窄的条件——无论是在他的环境还是汽车动力学方面——才能达到他最好的状态。然后，他和任何人都一样好。

在那扇窗外，维特尔是一个更不稳定的表演者——这一特点被法拉利的诱惑所放大，这一诱惑让他陷入了一个与他在红牛所处的环境截然不同的环境。

维特尔是一个有缺陷的天才，也许是F1中最人性化的伟大冠军之一。这就是为什么他如此受欢迎的原因，即使有时情绪波动确实会加剧。

虽然他并不是一个完美的人，但他值得人们记住他最辉煌的时刻，在红牛车队做了看似不可能的事情。