Vettel explains 'shake and bake' celebration

"Shake 'n' bake, baby! Shake 'n' bake!" yelled Sebastian Vettel over the team radio after learning that he had managed to pip his team mate Mark Webber to pole position for the 2013 United States Grand Prix in Austin, Texas by a tenth of a second.

Fans are all-too familiar with Vettel's pointy finger, and we remember all too clearly the toe-curling Crazy Frog phase, and more recently we've been thoroughly entertained by Vettel serving up donuts. But where did the shake 'n' bake reference come from at the end of Saturday's qualifying session at the Circuit of the Americas?

"It was a nice quote, I think it suits," said Vettel when asked about the exchange with his race engineer after the end of the session. "I think there was a movie a couple of years ago which was about racing and I think it was more a piss-take than an actual movie."

The film in question is Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, a comedy set in the world of NASCAR stock car racing made in 2006 which starred Will Ferrell and Sacha Baron Cohen that remains a big favourite for American race fans.

Vettel explained that the call-out to the film hadn't come from him, but from his engineer Guillaume "Rocky" Rocquelin. "Well, he started it!" he laughed.

"Obviously we're in America," continued Vettel "My engineer has a lot of history here, knows a lot of people, he did a lot of racing [here] early in his career. You need to ask him whether it's what he used to say when he secured pole position in the US!"

Burnouts are also a very American way of celebrating race wins, so if Vettel wins this weekend's penultimate Grand Prix of the season will he be tempted to keep his run of celebratory donuts going for the US fans?

"Well, to worry about that is a nice problem to have but first of all we have to focus on tomorrow's race," Vettel laughed. "I'm sure Mark will try everything to get past as well as the people behind - Romain and so on - so it will be a long race, there are a lot of things that can happen.

"I don't think it's the highest priority to be honest to worry about that [burnouts] right now. I think it has to happen very spontaneously."

Also on the line is a possible new record for Vettel to add to his collection of F1 milestones: a victory in Austin would make it a run of eight consecutive race wins that would be a new record (as long as you discount Alberto Ascari's run of nine wins in 1952/3 but which spanned one race in which he was not entered.)

"I'm not trying to think that much about these things," insisted Vettel. "I think maybe I'm not that clever!

"Lately I seem to have succeeded so I think it's not the right mindset to go into the race thinking about a higher target than just the race," he explained. "I think we've done pretty well with that kind of approach so far, the last couple of years, so I don't see a reason to change."