Team strategy is not top priority for Vettel

If - as he did in Brazil last weekend - the German wins on Sunday ahead of his teammate Mark Webber, it will be Fernando Alonso who is crowned world champion.

With 'team orders' illegal and ruled out by his employer Dietrich Mateschitz, whether Vettel will voluntarily move over to help Webber win the title is therefore "hotly debated" at present, the 23-year-old admitted.

"Without joking, I am not thinking about it now," he told Bild newspaper whilst travelling by plane to Abu Dhabi on Wednesday.

"My first goal is pole position, my second is winning the race. And if necessary I can analyse the situation and decide very quickly," added Vettel.

The marketing professor at the top Spanish business school IESE thinks Mateschitz's approach to the 2010 season finale is very clever.

Red Bull car designer Adrian Newey is the latest to weigh in on the debate, insisting that both drivers will have a free run to the title this weekend but hoping that one might be "magnanimous" enough to help the other.

"If they lose the championship, they have not betrayed the values that convey the brand, so Red Bull still wins. They cannot lose," marketing professor Jose Luis Nueno told El Pais newspaper.

Another global marketing expert, Josep Franch of the ESADE business school in Barcelona, asked rhetorically: "Is if profitable for Red Bull to fail to win in order to defend their ideals?"

Answered Miquel Altarriba, of the Universitat Ramon Llull: "I do not think Red Bull will betray its identity."

"If they lose with this strategy, it will not work out badly for them," he thinks.