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" They say the best men are molded out of faults. Sebastian Vettel&amp;#039;s 2010 season was frequented by errors\u2014including running into his teammate in Turkey and spearing Jenson Button in Spa\u2014so he had an array of flaws to correct as he built the foundation for the vastly improved Vettel we see today. The turning point was his come-from-behind championship win in Abu Dhabi, the last race of 2010. Beginning then, and continuing all through the 19 races of the 2011 season, he has been as close to error-free as the imperfect art of F1 racing will allow. Let the stats tell the story: most wins (11), most poles (15), most laps led (739) and only one retirement (a flat tire; not his fault). He clinched his second championship with four races to go.         Top 10 in 2011 - #1 Sebastian Vettel     Vettel has a genuine, broad-grinning friendliness that makes him well liked even by his rivals, but he is also a perfectionist and ruthlessly self critical. His team, Red Bull, is equally complex. On one hand, they are delightfully improbable front-runners, small in comparison with Ferrari and McLaren and with no automotive heritage whatsoever. On the other, they are a sharply focused band of young pros, led by Christian Horner, who prepare bulletproof cars and execute the fastest pitstops in F1. Both Vettel and Horner rely on the genius of Adrian Newey, who designs the Red Bull cars, by hand, on an old-fashioned drafting table. Vettel&amp;#039;s 15 poles broke a record set in 1992 by Nigel Mansell in a Newey-designed Williams. His RB7 was 2011&amp;#039;s best car, but Vettel&amp;#039;s role in making it that should not be underestimated\u2014Mark Webber, in the same machine, was a possible winner but not a dominant force.   Today&amp;#039;s F1 driver is expected to have a skill set akin to an astronaut&amp;#039;s, and it is in this world of applied technology and split-second intuitive decisions that Vettel has left Webber\u2014and everyone else\u2014behind. Driving and thinking, at the same time\u2014that&amp;#039;s the game now. The cars are loaded with software that drivers, coached by engineers in the pits, can use for everything from shortcutting a failed sensor to reprogramming a faltering kinetic energy recovery system. There are tactical options to be considered, too, as tires of different compounds degrade at different rates and pitstop windows come and go depending on what your opponents are doing. Then there&amp;#039;s DRS, the drag reduction system. All the while, the driver is &amp;quot;working&amp;quot; the car\u2014making adjustments to the differential, say, or to the sensitivity of the throttle\u2014striving to keep the oversteer/understeer in balance as 300 lb. of fuel burns off and track conditions change. Vettel relishes all this. He is smart, he was born in the electronic age, and he inherited Michael Schumacher&amp;#039;s work ethic\u2014he&amp;#039;s the guy badgering the Pirelli engineer about the latest compound, and he&amp;#039;s often one of the last to leave the garage at night.   But his core strength is, and always has been, his sheer virtuosity. Dan Gurney, a Vettel fan from the beginning, points to his fundamentals: the perfection of his line, his superb car control. You see it most vividly in the first minutes of a race. Starting from pole, he makes a perfect run through the gears and is often far enough ahead at the first turn that he can take an ideal line through it, while his pursuers fight for racing room. At the end of lap one, he&amp;#039;ll be leading by two seconds. Two seconds! By lap three, when the DRS is activated, Vettel was usually well beyond its reach. The late, great Jim Clark could make starts like this, too, and for both men it&amp;#039;s evidence of pure talent, something that can&amp;#039;t be learned. Vettel makes these amazing starts in race after race, and instead of being bored we&amp;#039;re enthralled\u2014it&amp;#039;s the thrill of seeing something extremely difficult done perfectly.         Top 10 in 2011 - #2 Jenson Button     Sebastian is my choice for No. 1\u2014by acclamation. My No. 2 is Jenson Button. At the beginning of the season I would have rated him 4th, below Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton. But a lot of things happen over the course of eight months and 19 races, and Button just got better and better, finding something that hadn&amp;#039;t been there before, even in his championship year. His McLaren wasn&amp;#039;t quite right early on, but Jenson made the most of slippery conditions to win in Canada, surviving a collision with his teammate and passing Vettel at the beginning of the last lap. It was the season&amp;#039;s most dramatic moment.   Like Vettel, Button can be counted on to choose the right tires at the right time, especially when it&amp;#039;s raining, and his feel for a race&amp;#039;s shifting tactical nuances has earned him high praise from McLaren team principal Martin Whitmarsh, who says that Button, in the cockpit, is often a step ahead of the computer-equipped tacticians on the pit wall. In late summer, Button finished ahead of Hamilton, McLaren&amp;#039;s de facto No. 1, in five straight races, including two wins. At the same time, Vettel clinched the championship, leaving media attention to shift to the tense battle for 2nd, which Button was leading and would go on to win. Button was suddenly the team&amp;#039;s Main Man, and enjoying every minute of it. He signed a new contract\u2014after years of second-class equipment his future was secure. He ended the year on the podium, a solid 3rd behind Webber and Vettel. The Red Bulls were virtually invincible in 2011, but in Jenson&amp;#039;s hands, the McLaren was confirmed as the best of the rest.         Top 10 in 2011 - #3 Fernando Alonso     My pick for No. 3, Fernando Alonso, stoically endured a difficult season. Ferrari&amp;#039;s mandate was to avenge their 11th-hour defeat in 2010, but from the beginning it was clear the 150 Italia was racing for 3rds and 4ths, not wins, and that Fernando wouldn&amp;#039;t be in title contention. There wasn&amp;#039;t even a battle with his teammate to get juiced up about because Felipe Massa was so off-form there could be no satisfaction in beating him. In fact, for most of the year it seemed that the Scuderia itself was AWOL\u2014a team not living in the moment but rather wishing 2011 would just go away so they could move on to 2012 and the promise of their &amp;quot;radical&amp;quot; new car. It is therefore all the more remarkable that Fernando&amp;#039;s morale never sagged. For years, team managers up and down pit lane have chosen him as the driver they would most like to have\u2014for his speed, of course, but also because of his tenacity, his boldness, his fortitude. He wrings every last ounce of performance out of every car he drives. His lone win came at Silverstone, where he passed Vettel in the pits. At Monza, knowing he couldn&amp;#039;t win but that racing on Ferrari&amp;#039;s home turf called for something special, he put everything into the start, charging down the inside, not lifting as he took briefly to the grass, streaking into the lead. It looked reckless but the move was pure Alonso\u2014a brilliant driver making the most of every opportunity.         Top 10 in 2011 - #4 Lewis Hamilton     My No. 4, Lewis Hamilton, spent much of the season in a funk that infected both his personal life\u2014he split with his longtime girlfriend\u2014and his driving. For the first time in his six years of F1, he was outscored by his teammate. He collided with Felipe Massa six times and was reprimanded so often he wore a path to the stewards&amp;#039; office. Add the ugly tabloid headlines and a distaste for his new management (he fired his dad) and you have a scene that was anathema to McLaren, the eminence grise of F1, famous for its disciplined and methodical approach, always putting the team before the individual and placing a premium on consistency. But on those days he was good he was still very, very good, having lost nothing of his blazing speed, and he was able to answer his critics, almost, by winning three races. I believe the old Lewis will be back for 2012, and that, like Vettel, he will have learned from his mistakes. If the McLaren is just a hair quicker, this combination could be Vettel&amp;#039;s biggest threat.         Top 10 in 2011 - #5 Mark Webber     The nod for No. 5 goes to Mark Webber. At Abu Dhabi in 2010 he lost a golden chance to become World Champion, and when his teammate Vettel won the 2011 season opener in Melbourne in front of Mark&amp;#039;s fellow Australians, he seemed to concede to Vettel, and in fact he would finish behind him in every race but the last, which he won. He was handicapped by botched starts, but with his characteristic gritty determination he delivered a series of quality performances on the way to finishing 3rd in the championship. Excellent\u2014except that Vettel did so much better. Mark started in F1 a decade ago; he&amp;#039;s 35 now, with a Red Bull contract for 2012 only, and if he doesn&amp;#039;t get renewed, what then? Let&amp;#039;s hope his vast experience will allow him to stay in F1 as long as he chooses.         Top 10 in 2011 - #6 Nico Rosberg     The two Mercedes drivers, Nico Rosberg and Michael Schumacher, spent the season in a private contest, suspended in a sort of bubble between the top three teams and the midfield pack. Neither man was in danger of appearing on a podium, and the slowest of the Big Six, Massa, was able to keep them at bay despite never finishing higher than 5th. Rosberg was the faster qualifier, but in races Schumacher held his own and had the team&amp;#039;s highest finish, 4th, in Canada in the rain. They&amp;#039;re an odd couple: Rosberg is good\u2014but how good? The only person you can really compare him to is Schumacher, and he&amp;#039;s an enigma: not the driver who won 91 GPs and seven world championships, but possibly better than some think.         Top 10 in 2011 - #7 Michael Schumacher     I&amp;#039;ll go with Nico for No. 6 and Michael for No. 7. For No. 8, Felipe Massa. I have chosen him not only for his grace in adversity (the Hamilton business and Ferrari tactlessly telling the world they were letting him go at the end of 2012) but because he is a genuinely great driver (the winner of 11 GPs and my No. 1 pick in 2008) going through a rough patch yet still able to mix it up with drivers so good that Jackie Stewart says that this is the most talented group, ever, at the front of the grid. Except for Webber, the drivers who finished ahead of Felipe in the championship are all World Champions. Massa&amp;#039;s best finish may have been a mere 5th, but he had six of them, and 15 in the top 10. He was coming on strong at the end of the year, he&amp;#039;s still young\u2014only 30; I think Ferrari will have a tough time finding anyone better.         Top 10 in 2011 - #8 Felipe Massa     No. 9: Paul Di Resta. Paul was the best of the rookies, scoring a point for Force India in his first race, qualifying a brilliant 6th at Silverstone and finishing 6th in Singapore, the longest, toughest race of the year. He came to F1 from touring cars, an unusual route that left him having to learn most of the tracks\u2014and yet in qualifying he was the equal of his far more experienced teammate Adrian Sutil, whom the team let go at the end of the year. Paul&amp;#039;s connections at Mercedes-Benz landed him the Force India ride and will give him leverage to secure even better. A star in the making.         Top 10 in 2011 - #9 Paul Di Resta     No. 10: Heikki Kovalainen. In a sense, there were two championships in 2011, the second contested by the six drivers of the three expansion teams. In two seasons, they haven&amp;#039;t scored a single point, but Heikki Kovalainen led Lotus to 10th in the Constructors Championship, worth a cool $40 million. (HRT and Virgin get zilch, dooming them to fall even further behind.) Heikki has become a virtuoso at a skill you don&amp;#039;t expect of a Top 10 driver: staying out of the way\u2014and losing as little time as possible in the process.         Top 10 in 2011 - #10 Heikki Kovalainen     As we look forward to 2012, the question is: Can Vettel be beaten? In 2011, he got some help he might not get again. It was unusual for both Ferrari and McLaren to be weak at the same time, and early in the year different drivers went to the podium at each race, allowing Vettel to extend his overall lead even when he finished 2nd. His keen sense of history was evident during the Brazilian GP; struggling with a failing gearbox, he radioed Horner with a reference to Ayrton Senna, who&amp;#039;d fought a similar problem there in 1991. 2012 would be Sebastian&amp;#039;s third consecutive championship, something only Fangio (with four) and Schumacher (with five) have achieved. No doubt he appreciates the magnitude of the opportunity.   The top eight finishers in the 2011 championship all keep their rides for 2012, but the middle of the grid is in turmoil, with more than half of the drivers on their way out. Returning, however, is Kimi R\u00E4ikk\u00F6nen, a former World Champion once regarded as the fastest driver in F1. Kimi takes the seat that Lotus held open until the last moment for their still-recovering star Robert Kubica.   New tracks, new rules for 2013, new demands on the drivers\u2014F1 is changing, moving fast. Part business, part sport, part proving ground for advanced technology, it paused for a moment in 2011 to celebrate the sublime skills of one of its youngest drivers, Sebastian Vettel, World Champion. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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