'F1 doesn't define me as a person' says Vettel

Sebastian Vettel says that it's important to him to remember that being a Formula 1 driver is just a job, and that it doesn't define him as a person.

“Obviously F1 is a big part of my life but it is not the most important thing," the Ferrari driver told The Guardian newspaper this month.

"They are linked, but it is important there is a lot of time where it doesn’t define who I am," he added. "I don’t feel special because of what I do for a job.

"I am a lot of other things as well. It doesn’t define me as a person," he insisted. "It is not who I am, it is what I do."

Vettel is known to be intensely private about his private life. Although his two children have been to Grand Prix events, they've been spectators in the grandstand rather than paraded before the media on pit lane.

And in contrast to the jet set lifestyle of his title rival Lewis Hamilton, Vettel is content to be thoroughly domesticated when not at the office.

“I am happy to do things that people think are boring but for me they are not," he explained. "Being at home, mowing the lawn. I cook - not so good, but from time to time.

"I do the school run, I go shopping, I take the metro and the bus," he said. "I think it’s just normal to be normal.

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"I am sportsman, I am not celebrity," he continued. "When I go somewhere and somebody recognises me I think they are interested in sport and not in how I do my hair, or which shoes I am wearing, or that bollocks."

He's clear that this is not intended as a shot at Hamilton, toward whom Vettel continues to be scrupulously polite.

"He has great talent, he has great skill in the car," said Vettel, who said that the fierce competition between them in recent years was something that enhanced the sport.

Losing his temper is rare for Vettel, who now regrets the infamous 'wheel banging' moment in Baku in 2017.

"I wasn’t intending to hurt him, or end his race, or my race," he asserted. "But of course I am excited at times and feel the adrenalin.

"People would be surprised," he said. "They have the image that drivers under the helmet are all ‘Arggh!’ But you have to be calm in the way you drive because it takes all your concentration."

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