The F1 Championship is done and dusted. What now?

As Sebastian Vettel took the checkered flag at the Budh International Circuit, the F1 community was abuzz with talks about the career of the youngest Four time World Drivers Champion, and his assault on the record books. Sebastian now shares the record with Frenchman Alain Prost of having four Wordl Drivers Championships, just one behind Juan Manuel “El Maestro” Fangio, with Five Championships and arguably the greatest of all time, fellow German Michael Schumacher with Seven rings.

 

Vettel is also knocking on the door of the record for most wins in a season, Schumacher holds the distinction with 13 wins which was set back in 2004; he is 2 wins adrift with 3 races to go in the 2013 season.

 

Sebastian now has 36 wins to his credit, four ahead of his main rival Fernando Alonso and, five wins behind the legendary Brazilian, Ayrton Senna, while15 wins from Alain “the professor” Prost. Given his current form, the aforementioned statistics could well be eclipsed by Sebastian by 2014. Even the 91 wins by Schumacher doesn’t seem unassailable. Vettel currently has a 30.77 % winning percentage (36 wins in 117 races), passing Schumacher with 29.55% ( 91 wins in 308 races). There’s even talk that Vettel could be the first F1 driver to surpass 100 wins in his career.

 

Now the average fans, especially the non-Vettel fans, are left wondering; what now? Do I really need to spend time glued to the TV on a Sunday and watch the three remaining races? What has Formula 1 got to offer? The show is over and there’s nothing to be excited about.

 

While this in some part maybe true, all the Formula 1 teams still are fighting for the every point that they can notch up in the season. F1’s pot of prize money is traditionally split between the top ten teams, and since 2010, any team finishing outside of the front runners would also receive $10M, currently Caterham and Marussia have yet to score any points, and back in 2012 Caterham got the better of Marussia and was awared the $10M prize, this is estimated to be one-third of the teams overall budget. Making going all out and racing untill Brazil that important to all the teams.

 

Also, the status of being the number two team is still up for grabs, Mercedes, Ferrari and even Lotus, need to fight one another to secure that much coveted title. Mercedes leads Ferrari by four points in the constructors championship, with Lotus at 28 points back.

 

While all of this is happening, fans should keep an eye out for the odd driver / team confrontation; a prime example is the radio communication between the Lotus team and Kimi Raikkonen during the Airtel Indian GP, wherein Kimi was ordered to give way and let his teammate Romain Grosjean overtake. There were “colorful” words trasnmitted over the radio to say the least, and I am sure that t-shirt manufacturers are now finalizing designs for the now famous “Kimi quotes”.

 

In my opinion, the season is far from over, there is still a lot of racing to be held and as a self proclaimed F1 fan, I would not skip watching any of the remaining Grands Prix, I just like it too much to miss out on any the action.

 

The next race is in Abu Dhabi on November 3, with the penultimate round at Austin November 17, and the season finale on November 24 will be staged in Brazil.