Sebastian Vettel 2011 Champ: Bookie Pays Out but the Work Is Far From Done

Sebastian Vettel has had a pretty good start to season 2011. He has been on the front row of the grid at every race, only deferring to his teammate, Mark Webber, at Barcelona and he has won five of the first six races with only a second place in China to ruin the perfect score.

He now leads the championship by 58 points and is looking pretty invulnerable.

So comfortable is his lead and so dominant his performances that Irish bookmaker, Paddy Power, is paying out on bets for Vettel to win the championship.

Putting aside the fact that this is just a publicity stunt and that he probably wasn’t offering very good odds on Vettel anyway, it seems like a very big call to say the championship is over—especially with  over the two-thirds of the season still to come.

The more statistically minded F1 fans would doubtless be able to point out many championship races where bigger leads had been whittled away with less races remaining. We only need to look back to last season to see that Fernando Alonso recovered from a 47 point deficit in five races.

Sure, he still fell short in the end, but he was leading the championship up until the last race.

While Red Bull and Vettel are in a good position at the moment, things move very quickly in F1. Development never stops and each race brings changes that could see the grid turned upside down and with the upcoming rule changes, things can turn around at frightening speed.

The expected FIA ban on at least some types of blown diffusers may have a huge impact. Part of the Red Bull’s success is Adrian Newey’s brilliant hot blown diffuser design that gives additional downforce through corners.

Without that, the RB7 could be a fundamentally different car to drive.

Like 2010, we still have four other drivers who are in a position to challenge for the championship should Vettel stumble. History tels us that the stumble will inevitably come, the only unknown is how big the stumble will be.

Since the introduction of the reliability regulations restricting the number of engines and gearboxes, F1 is a changed sport. The sight of cars redistributing the oily bits across the landscape is now quite rare, but there’s plenty of other things to go wrong.

Sebastian Vettel may be able to collect if he made a small wager on himself, but I doubt that he’ll be lulled into thinking he’s got the season in the bag just yet.