Sebastian Vettel holds pretty much all the "youngest ever" F1 records going and several that hadn't even been thought of before he turned up in his pushchair as Sauber's Friday driver in 2006.

At the time of his F1 race debut in 2007, he hadn't actually won a title since taking the 2004 German Formula BMW Championship - not exactly a blue riband championship - and he had twice failed to win the F3 Euroseries, being pipped to the title at his second attempt by team-mate Paul di Resta, a man almost as dull out of the cockpit as he is scintillating in it.

Vettel started as he meant to go on, however, setting a record just six seconds into his F1 career by speeding in the pit lane as soon as he left the garage and chalking up comfortably the shortest time ever between making your debut as an F1 racing driver and incurring a penalty. He's been setting records on a seemingly daily basis ever since and marks each one by shouting, "That's what I'm talking about!", although he usually hasn't ever mentioned it before.

Early in his F1 career he was often referred to as "the new Schumacher" because he (a) comes from Germany, and (2) began racing at the Kerpen karting track, although he has conspicuously failed to live up to the nickname by not repeatedly driving his rivals off the track, parking his car in the middle of the track during qualifying in Monaco or being disqualified from a whole season for trying to kill Jacques Villeneuve, however justified that may have seemed at the time.

Unlike many of his contemporaries, Vettel continually changes his helmet design, which should make it more difficult to identify him during a race, although oddly enough it has probably made it easier: if there's a driver whose helmet you don't recognise, the chances are Sebastian Vettel is wearing it and if you can't be bothered to learn helmet designs, you can recognise Vettel because he'll be the bloke leading the race.

A life-long sufferer of slanty-finger syndrome (digitalis diagonalis), Sebastian is unable to point his index fingers straight up. His own condition is the "30-degree" strain, for which there is currently no cure; we can only hope that he simply stops qualifying in pole position and winning races, so that he will no longer be forced to display his disability in public and we can all stop laughing at him when he does.

When he wasn't driving people off the road, ramming other cars, parking in the middle of the track or trying to punch David Coulthard, Michael Schumacher displayed a dazzling talent for finding new ways to disadvatage his team-mate.

We're being slightly churlish, of course, but Schumacher's reputation as a driver will forever be coloured by the unsporting manner in which he raced. His first break in F1 came with Jordan at Spa in 1991 and his second with Ferrari at Silverstone in 1999, when he fractured a leg crashing at Stowe.

His final F1 drive through the field at Interlagos was a reminder of what his legacy could have been if he hadn't been quite so ready to tarnish it quite so frequently.

The wanker.

Mark Webber is an Australian racing driver and a bloody good one too, mate, although ever since an aerodynamic fault led to his Mercedes somersaulting twice on the Mulsanne straight during practice for the 1999 Le Mans 24 Hours, he has put forward a convincing case for being Johnny Herbert's successor as the unluckiest man in F1 or, indeed, sportscars.

He has lost more F1 podium finishes through no fault of his own than he has any right to and more than once he has been in a position to win a race that has then been snatched away from him. Notable amongst these occasions was the drenched 2007 Japanese Grand Prix, when his own nearly-team-mate Sebastian Vettel ran into the back of him behind the safety car just as it looked as if the second-placed Webber had the beating of eventual winner Lewis Hamilton. Strewth!

In fact, the Japanese race in 2007 turned out to be really quite eventful for Mark, who had food poisoning for the race and threw up inside his helmet during the first safety car period. Yuk.

Given his luck, it is perhaps not surprising that Mark is also twice a winner of the "Most Gratuitous Use Of The Word 'F*ck' In A Live ITV Broadcast" award¹.


¹"What was Sato doing, for f*ck's sake?", Turkey 2005 and "Kids with not enough experience to do a good job that they f*ck it all up", Japan 2007

Pretty much since his F1 debut with Sauber in 2002, Felipe Massa has been doing his best to shake off his reputation as a driver who is fast but wild, while for roughly the same period, dotdotdotcomma has been doing its best to reinforce that reputation.

It's not that we harbour any particular dislike of the chap but Massa is no more capable of changing his underlying nature than he is of, oh, I don't know, not spinning five times in the wet at Silverstone in 2008. During the duller parts of a Formula One season, it's nice to have someone a bit mad in the field for the occasional moments of insanity they provide and ever since Takuma Sato left the sport, Massa is the best we have.

That said, Massa has been guilty at times of Ferrarigance, which is a word we've just made up for the special brand of arrogance only a fully brainwashed Ferrari team member can display. His ridiculous protestations that Fernando Alonso had impeded him during qualifying at Monza in 2006 readily spring to mind, as does his failure to acknowledge that his spin at Fuji in 2008 had been caused when he turned in on Sebatien Bourdais. On both occasions, of course, the stewards favoured the bloke in red.

In any case, F1 would probably be less of a spectacle without loonies like Massa and "fast but wild" is not a bad epithet to have. It could be a lot worse. Just look at what we've called Michael Schumacher or Jacques Villeneuve.