Sebastian Vettel has praised fellow Fomula 1 drivers Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton, as two who are likely to achieve ‘all-time great’ status.
The German was speaking at the Goodwood Festival of Speed on Saturday when the question was put to him. He replied: “If you look at this season we’ve had a lot of different winners and those drivers are very competitive and very fast, but the ones that stand out are Fernando – he’s one of the most complete drivers – and Lewis is very, very quick.
“Then there are plenty of others. Michael [Schumacher] is still in the game, I don’t think he has lost it. It’s always depending on how well you do in combination with the package and the car and the team etcetera.”
Vettel added that status shouldn’t necessarily depend upon success nor the amount of titles a driver has won.
“Obviously [championship] success is a big part of it. If you look at great names from the past – I’m talking about drivers like Alain Prost, Ayrton Senna, Jackie Stewart and others – they all won a lot of titles. But sometimes there are other names that stay in your head and they stay around because they had something extra and were special,” he added.
“I think everyone in Formula One is a very quick race driver and knows what he’s doing, but some guys have something extra. Maybe it’s something the people loved, maybe it was very entertaining, very special to watch him driving the car – so there are plenty of other drivers who didn’t win a world championship but are some people’s heroes, and rightly so.
“Like Jochen Rindt, he won one championship but he was one guy in the German-speaking area who really attracted people for the first time really.”
