How a fallen Red Bull F1 hope became a Porsche great

Without an innocuous clash in a 2007 GP2 race, F1 history could have been very different with a German Red Bull Junior not called Sebastian Vettel ascending to Toro Rosso that year. Here's how he rebuilt himself to win four titles in as many years.

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During a remarkable 2006 GP2 campaign, Lewis Hamilton marked himself out as a future Formula 1 star with a convincing title-winning charge that included clean sweeps of the Nurburgring and Silverstone. But, while the now seven-time world champion had to wait until round three to take his first triumph, another series rookie opened his account on the first weekend of the year, when he took the reversed-grid spoils at Valencia.

Like Hamilton, he's currently sitting on a run of four consecutive titles, although you'd be forgiven after the quickfire 2020 campaign for missing former Red Bull Junior Michael Ammermuller's coronation in the ADAC GT Masters.

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Author James Newbold

James Newbold is Autosport's Plus Editor, responsible for coordinating website feature content.

In a sign of things to come, having completed his Politics and International Relations degree at the University of East Anglia in 2015, he left his graduation ceremony early to catch the last train to Brussels for the following day's Spa 24 Hours.

After a period as a freelancer, he joined the Autosport staff in 2018 and won the Motorsport UK young journalist of the year award.

He initially edited Autosport magazine's Performance and Engineering supplements before joining the website team in his current role in 2020.

A keen enthusiast of anything that can be categorised unusual, niche or random, he enjoys unearthing little-known stories across all branches of motorsport, but has spent most of his career covering sportscars as Autosport's British GT correspondent and is a regular part of the Le Mans 24 Hours reporting team.

An expert in catching 40 winks on media centre floors, he lives with his wife and son in Plymouth, England.