How does Sebastien Vettel compare to the greats of Formula One?

Of the hundreds of drivers who have pitted their wits in Formula One since 1950, only four have sealed a quadruple of titles: Juan Manuel Fangio, Michael Schumacher, Alain Prost and Sebastian Vettel. So we need to appreciate the fact that Sebastien Vettel has indeed achieved something sensational. And the very rate Vettel is racking up his championships, race wins (36), pole positions (43) and fastest laps (21) since his race debut in 2007 almost renders statistical comparisons invalid in itself. There’s clearly something special happening here. He is, after all, only 26. He has at least six more years at the top of his game and Vettel might continue to get better over at least three of those seasons. Imagine, then, Vettel at the age of 30 at the height of his powers, with five, six or seven titles under his belt. Realistically Schumacher’s record of 7 World Championships don’t stand a chance.

But the real question: Is he the greatest of all? There’s no statistical formula in the world that can draw any equivalence between the Lancia-Ferrari in which Juan Fangio won his fourth title and Vettel’s Red Bull RB9 and also the Ferrari F2001 in which Michael Schumacher won his 4th title. But we can at least compare their results.

Schumacher won seven titles, including an unmatched five in a row. In all but one of those seasons he did so in a car that was by far the quickest in the field, so much so that he won more than half the races. Prost won four titles, including back to back in 1985 and 1986; in three of those seasons he had the best car. His title in 1989 was the greatest as his team-mate at the all-conquering McLaren was one of F1’s greatest ever drivers, Ayrton Senna. In addition, Prost was denied the 1984 title by Niki Lauda by half a point(the closest-ever finish to a season); he missed out on the 1988 and 1990 titles because of the genius of Senna; and he fell short in the 1983 title when his turbo blew on lap 35 of the final race of the season. As for Fangio, he didn’t even enter Formula 1 until he was 39 years old. He won the title in 1951 in an Alfa Romeo despite the Ferrari being acknowledged as the better car; won the title easily in an almost unbeatable Mercedes in 1954; then made his way to the next three titles in an era when the cars were either perfectly evenly matched, or when fellow legends such as Stirling Moss were driving an identical machine.

Vettel, by comparison, won comprehensibly in 2010, 2011 and 2013 though he won the 2012 title after an epic season battling with Fernando Alonso. Critics often point to the Red Bull being technically far in advance of any other car on the grid, but how often has Mark Webber delivered with much the same equipment? How many times has Webber withstood the pressure of the fading qualifying window to perfect a lap time for pole, or stretched the performance of his tires to get an edge on his rivals? How many others have remained as cool when leading the field?

But there are other questions whose answers go against Vettel. How many more titles would Fangio have won had he got started aged 19, as Vettel did, instead of age 39? The answer is unthinkable, but double figures seems certain. How many consecutive titles might Prost have won had he had more reliable cars in those near-misses in the early years of his career? Or if a driver less talented than Ayrton Senna had been alongside him at McLaren? Or if that late 1980s technical dominance McLaren enjoyed had lasted the best part of a decade rather than a couple of years? For that matter, how many titles would Ayrton Senna have won had he not been tragically killed? And how many titles would Alonso have by now if he’d been driving that Red Bull car for the last four or five years?

This does not mean that Vettel is any less, in fact, he is excellent. But he had it easy and he has been lucky. Things have gone his way. So though now is not right time to say that he can be mentioned in the same breath as the likes of Fangio or Prost among the legends of the sport but maybe one day he will match their greatness or even surpass them. So hold your breath till that moment comes.