After a kart career that included a first Monaco win at the principality’s Kart Cup and a European karting crown, Vettel moved up to single seaters in the Formula BMW category. There, in 2004, he utterly dominated the season, winning 18 of the 20 races and finishing on the podium in the other two to take the overall title.

The performance marked him as a star in the making and he was soon fast-tracked to a testing role with Williams and then BMW-Sauber. When BMW-Sauber reserve driver Robert Kubica stepped into a race seat at the team, Vettel took over as third driver, becoming, at the 2006 Turkish Grand Prix, the youngest driver to take part in a grand prix weekend.

When Kubica was briefly sidelined following an accident at the 2007 Canadian GP, Seb’s big chance arrived and he made his Formula One debut at the US Grand Prix. After 73 gruelling laps of the Indianapolis track, the young prodigy crossed the line, his point for eighth place made him the sport’s youngest-ever scorer.

Despite the success, Vettel’s closest ties were still with Red Bull, where he had been schooled as part of the Red Bull Junior Team programme, and late in the 2007 season he moved to a race seat at Scuderia Toro Rosso, where, the following year, he made his next big impression on the world of F1.

Vettel arrived at the 2008 Italian Grand Prix with an improving car and an eye on points. He left Monza with a whole lot more. In a rain-hit qualifying session Vettel blasted to the front of the grid, becoming the sport’s youngest pole winner. In the race he was even more impressive and, unconcerned by the wet conditions, drove away from the pack to claim his and the team’s first win.

The step up to the senior team was the logical next move and in 2009 Vettel joined Red Bull Racing where he again made an immediate impact. At the wheel of an RB5 he scored the team’s first win, again in the wet, at the Chinese Grand Prix. He went on to score three more wins that season and finished as championship runner-up.

The following season he famously went one better. Victories at the Malaysian, European, Japanese and Brazilian Grands Prix put Vettel in contention for the title, though with two heavy-hitting rivals in team-mate Mark Webber and Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso ahead of him on points going into the last race, Vettel’s chances looked remote.

However, nobody appeared to have let Seb know that and an almost perfect weekend saw Vettel take pole and the race win while his rivals stumbled. The race win made him the sport’s youngest champion.

If the 2010 season had been a fight to the finish, the following season was one in which Vettel, armed with the ultra-quick and reliable RB7, could display all his prodigious skills to the fullest. On the way to a dominant second title win he notched up 11 victories and a single-season record of 15 pole positions. The consistency also helped the team to back-to-back Constructors’ Championship wins.

By contrast the 2012 season was one of struggle, albeit with a triumphant end. Where the RB7 had been putty in Vettel’s hands, the RB8 was a more intractable proposition and a difficult first half of the season saw Sebastian take a single win, in Bahrain, and go into the season’s summer break 42 points off the championship lead.

However, a second half surge saw the defending champion bounce back, and with four wins in a row from Singapore to India, Seb put himself in the ideal position to eventually claim his third crown at the season finale in Brazil.

After just five full seasons, Sebastian Vettel has established himself as one of Formula One’s most potent forces. It now remains to be seen what further rewrites the three-time champion can make to the sport’s record books.