03/02/2013
NEWS STORY
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At the launch of the car he hopes will take him to his fourth (successive) title, Sebastian Vettel - a keen fan of British humour - broke Basil Fawlty's cardinal rule and mentioned the war.
Asked if the RB9 might be the car to carry him to that magical fourth successive title, the German youngster, replied" "World domination? I'm German, but I didn't say that...
"I have no moustache," he quickly added, much to the delight of the assembled guests, media and team members.
When he was subsequently asked what he thinks the pecking order might be this season, he became a little more serious. "Although we have had great success, a new season is a clean sheet, with new car. It all starts again from zero; we all have the same chance. It will be another long year, with a lot of races, and a very tough challenge awaits us all. I'm looking forward to that.
"We've achieved a lot," he continued, "but I'm not really thinking about that, as it doesn't give us a head start or anything. If anything it just adds to people's expectations. But that's the same for all of us - we expect a lot of ourselves too. So, I'm excited about it - the challenge, the racing, all of it."
And is that fourth title, a feat only achieved by Juan Manuel Fangio and Michael Schumacher, possible? "This is what I'm talking about. Mark will start in the car next week and I'm sure he'll start very strongly. I'll obviously try to continue where he leaves off but it will be tough. It will be tough to beat Mark and it will also be tough to beat the other teams. There's no guarantee. You really have to focus on every single race, every single lap and try to get everything together. As soon as you have the helmet on, you want to perform and you want to do your best."
Finally, whilst some in the sport - not necessarily drivers - enjoy a Rock 'n' Roll lifestyle, the German youngster admits that he didn't exactly live the highlife during the off-season.
"The winter was pretty quiet," he says. "Last season was a long one, with a lot of travelling, especially at the end when we had quite a few back-to-back races. We had a very strong finish last season, but it was a tough challenge, so it was important for me to enjoy some time at home doing other things - some DIY, stuff that there was never time to fix during the season. I enjoyed that.
"It was good to relax and chill out for a while but pretty soon I started training again, preparing for the new season and I'm very excited today because this is the first time I've seen the car in one piece. I've seen little bits, but it looks very nice seeing it all together. Now we'll get to see if it works as expected. I'm excited to get going again, to get back in the car, start testing and then go racing. Then, we'll finally find out where we are."
Did he say DIY? "Err… a little bit," he laughs. "I don't want to go into too many details. Just some stuff that was lying around for the whole year and I eventually got around to it."
DIY? Why didn't he go down the Basil Fawlty route and get O'Reilly in?
Check out our RB9 gallery, here.