Damien Smith: Off Line

Two weeks earlier he had been hanging around the Nurburgring paddock wearing BMW team gear, at a bit of a loose end. We'd asked him what he reckoned he'd be up to next year. "I don't know," he shrugged with a smile.

With BMW apparently in no hurry to re-sign Nick Heidfeld, he was still hopeful of landing one of the best race drives on the grid, but he also knew it was more realistic to expect his Red Bull ties to pay dividends.

And so it proved, only much earlier than Sebastian Vettel could possibly have predicted in that paddock in Germany. In the days after the European Grand Prix, it became obvious that Scott Speed's position at Scuderia Toro Rosso had become untenable.

The row with team boss Franz Tost after his race retirement, the peculiar 'Nothing to report' press release on Sunday afternoon - all the signs read that Speed had raced in his last grand prix for STR, and probably for anyone.

And so it proved. Vettel was the obvious man to step in, so BMW released him, he was duly announced as the new STR driver and then, on Thursday at the Hungaroring, was confirmed as a full-time race driver for 2008. No more hanging around grand prix paddocks at a loose end for this young driver.

Vettel, who leads this year's Renault World Series, has already proved a hit in Formula 1 because of his laid-back personality and sense of humour - and it doesn't hurt that this highly-rated man became the youngest-ever F1 points scorer when he subbed for Robert Kubica at the US GP. It was quite a debut.

But in Hungary he knew it would be a different story. This would be a tougher prospect, one in which he would be stepping into a team he had never even tested for, in a car that often fails to get out of Q1 on Saturday afternoons, against a team-mate who is under considerable pressure himself.

Tonio Liuzzi will know that, if he can put Vettel in his place, it will be a timely reminder that the Italian should still be a target for better teams. Up against all that, Vettel was destined to play a bit-part in the drama that was the 2007 Hungarian GP.

And so it proved. All credit is due for matching Liuzzi for pace on Friday, his first day as an STR driver, but a mistake in qualifying left him stranded in the depths of Q1 as Liuzzi made it through to the second round.

"It is not easy to get adapted, but I think I will manage that quickly," Vettel said. "In the first laps we were a bit lost, but you adapt quite quickly and in the end you feel okay. It's an F1 car, and it's bloody quick.

"For sure, it's not on the same level [as the BMW Sauber], but as a driver you don't really care. You just try to get the maximum out of the car, give 100 per cent, and if that is not enough then you work a bit harder to do better. So it was fun, and I think that was the most important thing."

Vettel could have only one realistic aim from raceday. To make it to the finish would be an achievement in itself.

And so it proved: a hard slog to 16th at a physically demanding track on a very hot day. "It felt like a long race, but the main thing is that I finished," he said. "Over a race distance, the car changes a lot and you have to adapt, which is not easy when you don't know the car."

Out of the limelight, simply learning about his new team and his new challenge, with no chance of gaining big headlines no matter how good he drove. Reality bites, Sebastian. Welcome to life at the other end of F1.