Key figures: Sebastian Vettel (2010 World Champion), Fernando Alonso (Ferrari, runner-up), Mark Webber (Red Bull teammate), Lewis Hamilton (McLaren), Christian Horner (Red Bull Racing team principal), Adrian Newey (Red Bull chief technical officer)
Summary
On November 14, 2010, the German driver Sebastian Vettel won the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, the final round of the Formula One season, and with it his first World Drivers’ Championship. At 23 years old — reported as 23 years and 134 days — he became the youngest world champion in the history of the sport, surpassing the mark Lewis Hamilton had set in 2008. He drove for Red Bull Racing, the team with which he had risen to prominence.
Vettel entered the finale fourth in the standings and trailing the championship leader, Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso, by 15 points, meaning he needed both to win the race and for results elsewhere to fall his way. Starting from pole position, he led throughout, while Alonso and Vettel’s teammate Mark Webber — the other two title contenders — became stuck in traffic behind Renault’s Vitaly Petrov and finished seventh and eighth respectively. The outcome lifted Vettel to 256 championship points, four ahead of Alonso’s 252, and secured the title at the last possible round after a season in which the lead had changed hands repeatedly. Red Bull Racing, powered by Renault engines and built around Adrian Newey’s aerodynamics, also clinched its first Constructors’ Championship in 2010.
Significance
Vettel’s 2010 title established him as the sport’s youngest champion and launched one of Formula One’s most dominant runs: he went on to win the drivers’ championship in each of the next three seasons, taking four consecutive titles from 2010 to 2013. His breakthrough also confirmed the arrival of Red Bull Racing — a team that had entered the sport only in 2005 — as the leading force of the era, displacing the established manufacturer outfits.
The championship’s late resolution, decided by strategic misfortune for the leaders rather than a single decisive pass, made the 2010 finale one of the most closely fought in the sport’s history, with four drivers still mathematically able to take the title heading into the final race. Vettel’s youth-record achievement stood until Max Verstappen’s rise a decade later, and it framed the German as one of the defining champions of the 2010s.