Laid-back Sebastian Vettel puts pedal to the mettle as he lives up to Schumi comparisons

SEBASTIAN Vettel is a very unusual German and an even more unusual Formula One driver. For a start, he's hard-wired with a laughter gene, and he's a driver who doesn't take himself too seriously.

An Anglophile who speaks perfect English and whose favourite band is the Beatles, which he insists on listening to on vinyl. He can quote huge tracts of Monty Python and Little Britain from memory, and thinks the double entendres of the Carry On series are works of art.

A laid-back, beanie-wearing grunge-monster who names his cars after ex-girlfriends (this year's is "Luscious Liz", last year's was "Kate's Dirty Sister") and whose off-duty sartorial style is taken straight from the Kurt Cobain playbook, Vettel has developed an enduring love affair with his adopted country. "I like British culture," he says. "Maybe it's because I have a sense of humour that is not always politically correct. I really like England even though it's always raining and there are lots of roundabouts in Milton Keynes (where his Red Bull team are based]."

Nor is he one of the gilded petals of the F1 circuit. In fact, when recently told that Lewis Hamilton had just sacked his dad as his manager as he didn't think Hamilton Snr was doing enough to promote "Brand Hamilton", Vettel apparently laughed at the absurdity of it all. The German doesn't have a manager and has no plans to get one. Even now, when he goes to watch his beloved Eintracht Frankfurt, he stands on the terraces and queues with the other fans for his half-time sausage. His only attempt to protect his anonymity is to pull his beanie down over his ears.

If the 22-year-old is a one-off, then there are also uncanny echoes of another, less comic-minded, German. After coming second in the championship last year, the way that Vettel has grabbed this championship by the throat this season, qualifying on pole for three of the first four races, has been eerily reminiscent of Michael Schumacher at his finest.

Back in Germany there's something approaching a mania for comparing the two drivers. Schumacher first identified his compatriot as a future F1 champion when Vettel was taking the go-karting world by storm as Schumacher had done before him. The similarities are striking: there's the way the two Germans dominated go-karting and F3 before moving into F1 at a precocious age; there's their uncompromising driving style; and then there's their humble backgrounds in provincial towns, with Vettel's dad a carpenter and Schumacher's a bricklayer.

If anything, though, Vettel is more precociously talented than Schumacher, the only German to have won the Drivers Championship. Vettel was the youngest F1 test driver when he took out a BMW aged 19 years and 53 days, and the youngest ever F1 driver and points scorer. He's the youngest man to lead an F1 race, the youngest on pole, the youngest winner of a Grand Prix and the youngest man to finish second in the championship.

The German certainly has the self-belief: "All these nice people saying I'm going to be world champion won't make me any faster. You have to believe it yourself." If he continues at this rate then the odds are that he will become the youngest world champion of all time in Bahrain, when he will be 23 years and 153 day old.

If that happens, Vettel believes that he will owe Schumacher a bier or three. As he says, "there's not been much focus on me this year because some old German guy has decided to come back. He's keeping all the German writers busy and that's good for me. I take my hat off to the old guy."

The endless comparisons between the two German drivers sends Vettel slightly potty, but he knows that resistance is futile. "They used to call me 'Baby Schumi' and I didn't like it but I understood."

If the dark cloud of Schumacher's return has turned out to have a silver lining, so too has his choice of team. Under designer Adrian Newey and with an outstanding Renault engine, Red Bull have become so competitive that the other drivers are convinced it is only a matter of time before their dominance in practice and qualifying is translated into points.

With the other three rival teams all beset by infighting and personal agendas, Vettel is also benefiting from a team environment that is as non-confrontational as it's possible to get in F1. He failed to endear himself to current team-mate Mark Webber in 2007 when he was driving for Toro Rosso and shunted the second-placed Red Bull driver off the track in Japan in the sheeting rain. After the race the Aussie moaned that "it's the kids, they f*** it all up", but these days the two are firm friends.

But if Vettel is ultra-competitive ("it breaks my balls not to win"), he can afford to be relaxed about the threat from Webber. The younger man is the quicker driver. Their relationship is, he explains , similar to that between the German and Australian teams who meet in the first match of the World Cup in South Africa on 14 June. "Germany will win," he says, matter-of-factly. "We've had years when we've been pretty sh** as well but I think we have a good team."

Spoken like a true German – only in an English accent.