- Red Bull
I have nothing to prove - Vettel
Sebastian Vettel says he doesn't need to move teams to prove himself as a driver as the best drivers find their way to the best teams.
Despite taking his fourth consecutive drivers' championship, Vettel still has his critics who believe his success is solely down to the car he drives and that he'll only be proven as a true great once he's raced the likes of Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton in equal machinery. However, Vettel said he doesn't feel the need to switch teams to go up against specific drivers.
"I think generally as a driver you always target to be at the best team and I think if you look back through Formula One history there's always been the best drivers winning races and championships with the best teams," Vettel said. "I don't know, maybe I'm wrong, but I'm very happy where I am. I think I'm with one of the best teams and in the end it's about you and whether you're happy with who you are if you look yourself in the mirror. Currently I am, racing for Red Bull and I'm not thinking about going anywhere else.
"Racing with anyone else … it's not my job to sign up certain people! I'm happy to stay here, as I expressed. Next year Daniel is coming in which I think is difficult to judge right now but I'm sure he'll do a good job and try very hard to give me a hard time. Equally I think you could look back and say if you look for a strong driver line-up in 2009 Mark was part of the team and a strong element of the team. If you want to have a successful future why would you sign up a young driver? Sign up somebody else, spend some more money and maybe you have success guaranteed. But this hasn't been the approach back then - fortunately, that's why I'm still sitting here! - and it's good to see that the approach hasn't change to make use of the drivers Red Bull has within its driver program."
And Vettel said the challenge of winning with the same team would not become tiresome for him.
"Well certainly for next year I think that's the biggest project that is coming up, with new regulations and a new engine etc. there's a lot of work to do. Also you have to say that within five years things do change even if you are in the same team; people will come and some people leave, unfortunately, but that's reality.
"So there are also plenty of new challenges for sure for next year with the new regulations, but also if you look back at the last four years. First to be part of the process and develop a car around a double diffuser that wasn't supposed to be developed around it in the first year. For the second year to really discover the power of putting the exhaust in the right place and make use of that. Then we obviously lost that for 2012 and came back since then.
"For next year it's a new challenge so basically you can be sure that we're very, very busy and there's a reason why we have so many people working here. We have constantly for the last four or five years run out of parking spaces because we just keep growing!"
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