But F1 had moved on in the three years he’d been out and Schumacher was no longer the relentless force of old. Michael Schumacher had looked lost in retirement since stepping down from Ferrari at the end of 2006, and now he was back with the manufacturer with whom it had all started for him in Group C sports cars so many years before. Then there was the new Silver Arrows, as Brawn morphed into the first Mercedes factory F1 team since 1955, spearheaded by an all too familiar old face. Meanwhile, Alonso, newly arrived at Ferrari from Renault, began empire-building in a search for redemption after his damaging and controversial one-off season at McLaren back in 2007. Hamilton too found himself under pressure when champion Button surprised everyone by joining McLaren – and surprised everyone again by outshining Lewis on more occasions than expected. The following year proved to be a classic as Webber showed his mettle, the team-mates colliding in calamity in Turkey. Jenson Button and Brawn GP might have pulled the rug on everyone in 2009, but by mid-season it was clear that Vettel and Red Bull were fastest. Then when a happy-go-lucky kid from Germany joined them, after a memorable shock win at Monza in 2008 for the sister Toro Rosso squad, the potent new axis of F1 power was complete. But by 2005, founder Dietrich Mateschitz and his friend, ex-F1 driver and Formula 3000 team owner Helmut Marko, had taken over the shambles that was Jaguar Racing, then installed bright and ambitious Christian Horner to run it – who, crucially, lured Adrian Newey from McLaren to design their cars around Renault’s new 2.4-litre V8s as F1 kissed goodbye to screaming 3.0-litre V10s. Red Bull meant little to anyone when the logo emerged in the mid-1990s on the side of the Saubers. Move over Ferrari, McLaren and Williams (by now struggling as a lowly independent): here was a fresh, young bull in the field – and it held the higher ground. Vettel and the Austrian energy drinks brand he drove for came to dominate the first years of F1’s most recent decade, to complete a perfect run of four consecutive drivers’ and teams’ titles. But if there was some fortune at play in his first world championship, this had been no fluke.
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