Vettel shock at title achievement

Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel said he was finding it difficult to come to terms with the fact that he had joined the ranks of three-time champions. The 25-year-old German was sixth at the Brazilian Grand Prix to become the ninth driver to win three titles. He is only the third after Argentine Juan Manuel Fangio and German Michael Schumacher to win three in a row. "To win that third title here, where one of my greatest idols Ayrton Senna was from, is unreal," Vettel said. $render("aert","advert-companion","20487592"); $render("advert-post-script-load"); Vettel on 'unreal' third title require( { baseUrl: "http://static.bbci.co.uk/sport/ui/2.0.2/js/desktop/" }, ["empswitch"], function(empswitch) { empswitch.init(); } ); "It's very difficult to imagine I join him and other great names in winning three titles." Vettel, who is a keen fan of F1 history, said he could not compare this championship with his previous two. In 2010, he made up a 15-point deficit on Ferrari's Fernando Alonso at the final race, while in 2011 he dominated the season and won with four races to spare. This year, the Red Bull has always been a strong race car but the team struggled to make it work consistently in qualifying until a major upgrade at the Singapore Grand Prix at the end of September, from which he won four races in a row. Those results, and Alonso's retirement from the Japanese Grand Prix, turned around a 39-point deficit to the Spaniard into a lead for Vettel by the Korean race in mid-October. "[It's] always difficult to compare," he said. "It was a very, very tough season for us, on track, off track - a lot of ups and downs for everyone," he said. "But we always remained ourselves and kept doing it our way and that made the difference in the end." He added that he felt his rivals had resorted to underhand methods to try to destabilise Red Bull - although he did not specify what those were. "It is unbelievable but the most important thing is that throughout the season we always kept believing in ourselves," he said. "A lot of people tried to play dirty tricks but we did not get distracted by that and kept going our way, and all the guys gave a big push right to the end.