It was Sebastian Vettel’s old backgammon rival, Bernie Ecclestone, who accused the four-time world champion of not being rock ’n’ roll enough for the sport.

It is not an opinion they have ever discussed. But sitting on the top floor of the Ferrari motorhome in the Silverstone paddock, Vettel gave his riposte. It came with a smile, as most of Vettel’s opinions do. It was, however, unapologetic.

‘Boring, very boring,’ he said of his life away from the track. ‘I am just a normal guy. What do normal guys do? Enjoy the weather. Do housework, DIY, whatever comes up. I just try to be myself. That is how I relax.

Ferrari driver Sebastian Vettel reveals he is a fan of Only Fools and Horses and he also loves the British

The four-time world champion admitted his life away from the race track is 'Boring, very boring'

‘People on the outside want us to be this and that. And, if we are, they complain. Sadly, I am not part of that generation, such as Senna, Prost, Piquet and Lauda, who didn’t have to listen to this s***. If you told them what to do, they would give you the f*** off.’ He does the V-sign.

‘I stopped playing backgammon — maybe that’s why Bernie said what he did.’

If those words sound a damning, stern-faced rebuke, they are not. That is not Vettel’s style. His style is genuine and funny.

A few minutes before I met him, he conducted a press conference in his native German. Asked what he likes most about the British, he said: ‘Their sense of humour. It’s not going to be the weather or the food, is it?’

In fact, he loves the British. Some drivers tell the audience in whatever country they happen to be in that it is their favourite. ‘Korea, I love it,’ they gush.

That is not Vettel’s way. He can recall such British classics as Del Boy falling through the bar in Only Fools and Horses. He loves the English language. He goes for a ‘Jimmy’. He likes rolling his tongue around the word ‘kerfuffle’.

He likes languages of every sort, especially, as you may have gathered, in their vernacular form. He has just bought a book of Italian slang so he can communicate in the argot of his Ferrari mechanics.

He is a lover of old things — old motorbikes and old cars (both of which he has three or four) and old drivers. Ask some of his rival racers about motor racing’s early days and they will talk about Ayrton Senna, not Tazio Nuvolari. Vettel has read up on them all.

Bernie Ecclestone accused the four-time world champion of not being rock 'n' roll enough for the sport

Ferrari, therefore, suits him perfectly. He enjoys eating at the local Montana - Michael Schumacher’s favourite restaurant.

Vettel is reluctant to touch on Schumacher while he remains ill from a skiing accident. He wishes to respect the stricken driver’s privacy (as he does his own, not welcoming questions about life on a Swiss farm with Hanna and their baby daughter Emily, with a second child on the way).

‘Michael is not here with us in the way he should be,’ he says. ‘I get down about it. He was a childhood hero and then I got to know him as a person.’

Vettel is only 27 — and still has the straggly-beard look of a student doing South America on 10 dollars a day — but he is now working with the next generation of drivers as an ambassador for Formula Four in Germany.

Vettel has won one race, in Malaysia, since leaving Red Bull at the end of a horribly fruitless final season

One of its stars is Mick Schumacher, Michael’s teenage son. Out of respect for Mick’s privacy, again, he tells me not to write down too much of what he says about the boy, whom he describes as being a well-educated young man, whose name carries enough pressure regardless of his father’s predicament.

Vettel’s fortunes have improved since joining Ferrari at the start of the season on a contract worth about £35million a year. He conducts his own negotiations and, for all the folksy charm, he knows how to drive a deal home.

He has won one race, in Malaysia, since leaving Red Bull at the end of a horribly fruitless final season after four years of world championship glory.

Ferrari are closer than any other team to matching the dominance of Mercedes, but not remotely fast enough to challenge them for the title. So how can a driver with 40 career wins tolerate such a long barren spell?

Ferrari are closer than any other team to matching the dominance of Mercedes and Lewis Hamilton

‘I always appreciated that the successful years were something special, not normal, not to be taken for granted,’ he says. ‘So this is why it wasn’t hard when I was not on the podium.

‘There are times when it comes together. Times that are more difficult. One team makes a step ahead — you don’t say this is s*** or that is s***. Everybody gets what they deserve.’

Vettel, being an old-school racer, does not care for energy recovery technology or fuel-saving. ‘We want soul,’ he says. ‘People fighting for position. The spectacle. The smell.’

Vettel, being an old-school racer, does not care for energy recovery technology or fuel-saving

What of his chances in Sunday’s British Grand Prix? ‘If it is wet there is a higher chance of creating a result. And if it is hot that might help us, too, with our tyres.’

And so, smiling, Vettel returns to the subject of the British weather.

Meanwhile, the FIA’s world council vote next week on banning some driver aids for the Belgium Grand Prix in August. Swingeing penalties for engine changes also look likely to be dropped in time for the next race in Hungary.