[rice_classic]

Just about every Champion I can remember (have been watching since mid 1980's) has been able to win a championship in a non-dominant car or taken a non-competitive car and helped make it so (lauda, schumacher, senna, prost, hamilton@merc etc).

Vettel has yet to do this. He hasn't taken an uncompetitive car and wrung it by the scruff of the neck like Alonso has done with the Ferrari of the last 2 years. Vettel hasn't won a championship without Adrian Newey. Before he was at RBR, he wasn't with any team long enough to do anything other than drive what was given quickly and then "poof" he was somewhere else the next year. He's going to be a 4 time world champion, but the way I look at it, he's just part of a 4 time RBR championship.

It's like saying Scotty Pippen was a 3 time champion, and while this is true it is only true because he played on the same team in those years as Michael Jordan. Vettel is (will be) a 4 time champion only because he played on the same team as Adrian Newey.

As for diminishing fan base... In MS's dominant years the fans bitched about it but MS, unlike Vettel, still owned the crowd. The races still sold out, the fans still showed up in Ferrari Red all around the world and while everyone wanted the racing to be more exciting, MS still had a MASSIVE fan base. Schumacher wasn't booed when he was dominating because even though the racing was boring, the person that was winning was a person people still liked. I think the booing is representative of how few people are fans of Vettel, regardless of where he finishes the race.