To become a champion by simply being a talented driver is not enough in F1. You have to go above and beyond and work exceptionally hard — both on and off the track — to taste victory, and that’s what made Sebastian Vettel a four-time world champion.
Vettel was at the peak of his powers during his time at Red Bull, dominating the grid between 2010 and 2013. However, what fans saw on race days was not the extent of the effort he put in, as Calum Nicholas recently revealed.
Nicholas, who has been a Red Bull technician for over a decade, spoke about Vettel’s desire to learn everything about the car he drove.
Normally, that would be the job of people like Nicholas — the engineers and mechanics of the team. However, Vettel willingly took on extra responsibilities, just to get better.
Nicholas stated how Vettel did not care about just having the faster car. “He wanted to understand why. And it was the effort he always put in, you know. He would have been an engineer,” he said on the High Performance podcast.
27 Oct 2013: Sebastian Vettel clinches his 4th straight world title with victory in India – & celebrates in style #F1 #OnThisDay pic.twitter.com/YlX89PzHkr
— Formula 1 (@F1) October 27, 2016
The Red Bull senior technician continued, “He would have quite happily worked and worked and sort of kept understanding more and more, and that’s vital.”
Nicholas wasn’t there to witness Vettel’s heroics from Red Bull’s garage, as he was a mechanic for Marussia when the German driver was winning races for fun. However, the impact Vettel had on the Milton-Keynes-based outfit’s future was profound. He created a winning culture, planting the seeds of success for Red Bull’s next dominant era which Max Verstappen has been leading since 2021.
However, Verstappen’s approach to racing is quite different from Vettel’s.
Verstappen’s mantra
The word ‘hard work’ is not directly associated with Verstappen as much as it is with some other former world champions. It doesn’t take anything away from the type of driver he is, of course. Very few live and breathe racing as passionately as the Dutchman does.
Unlike Vettel, measuring the amount of work Verstappen puts in is extremely difficult, as Nicholas suggested. “Max will do absolutely anything required to win. So, in terms of the hard work, it’s sort of limitless.”
Verstappen always does whatever it takes to improve and be the best. According to Nicholas, it could be about the car, himself, or his mentality — the 27-year-old is always learning and adapting.
So, while Vettel was calculative with his approach, Verstappen is more of an ‘all guns blazing’ kind of driver. He’s ultra-aggressive on the track too, reaffirming his commitment to winning at all costs, which has helped him surpass Vettel as Red Bull’s most successful driver ever.
Both have four world titles as of 2025, but Verstappen has 63 wins (and counting) for the Milton Keynes-based outfit. In contrast, Vettel retired in 2021 with 53 wins overall, 38 of which came for Red Bull.
