Imagine how mercurial weirdo David Blaine would feel.
He’s propped up in bed one Sunday morning, nursing a cup of lukewarm coffee, casually leafing through one of the numerous glossy supplements scattered about his super-kingsize bed, the semi-transparent curtains of his fashionable London apartment allowing just enough of the bright morning sunshine through to light his room.
He spots an interview with the wonderful Debbie McGee and on delving deeper he discovers that she thinks he’s no good at magic.
He lifts his coffee to his lips, takes another drink and flicks over to the crossword. Not one f*ck is given.
That’s probably how Sebastian Vettel feels right now.
Because former Ferrari driver and Michael Schumacher’s right hand man Eddie Irvine has publicly stated that the four time Formula 1 world champion is ‘overrated’ and a one-trick pony.
Vettel, whose first ever drive in a Formula 1 car was in 2005 in a Williams FW27 has as many Formula 1 world championships as Irvine has wins, was the target of the Ulsterman’s ire in an interview where he also criticises the spectacle of Formula 1 in 2019.
“As a four-times World Champion, I just don’t see it. I think he is massively overrated, he’s a one-trick pony and Lewis has a much broader talent” said Irvine.
“Vettel, when he is racing is someone, is focused as much on the other guy as he is on where he is going and inevitably crashes into the other guy, which happens nearly all the time.”
“I think Vettel is good if he is at the front and doesn’t have anybody to race”.
I’m no great fan of Sebastian Vettel, and some people might argue that he is, as Irvine states, a ‘one-trick pony’ but in the early 2010s his ‘one trick’ was to qualify on pole, build up as big a margin at the front as he possibly could in the race and pass the chequered flag first.
He repeated this ‘one trick’ enough to pick up four world championships. And he did it racing Michael Schumacher, Lewis Hamilton, Fernando Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen.
Eddie Irvine’s Formula 1 career began with Jordan in 1993 where he scored a solitary podium in three years before he was drafted in to support Michael Schumacher at Ferrari in 1996.
Irvine’s four Formula 1 wins in 1999 coincided with the derailment of Ferrari’s undisputed #1 Michael Schumacher’s championship challenge, breaking his legs in an accident at the British Grand Prix at Silverstone.
Two of those victories were gifted to him when Schumacher’s stand-in for the German Grand Prix – Mika Salo – who Irvine was comfortably outpaced by all weekend in only his second outing for the Scuderia, moved aside in the race allowing him to win, and the newly returning Schumacher doing likewise in Malaysia when it looked like Eddie might get in the way of Mika Hakkinen winning a second successive title for McLaren.
His challenge came to nought and he spent the following three years at Jaguar, largely outside the top ten before retiring.
He’s never short of an opinion is old Eddie, and so, like Jacques Villeneuve, will pop into our consciousness every now and again.
But like Jacques, he’ll pop out just as quickly.
0 Comments