AT the launch of Ferrari’s 2020 car team principal, Mattia Binotto, categorically stated that Sebastian Vettel was the first choice when considering the team line-up for 2021.
Fast-forward a few months and the picture looks markedly different.
Instead of Vettel Ferrari have signed up Carlos Sainz to partner Charles Leclerc for the 2021 F1 season. Was Binotto telling the truth? At the time he most likely believed that Vettel would be retained. So why, and how, did the Ferrari/Vettel relationship fall apart so abruptly?
Naturally, the speculation is rampant as to the reason for the break-up. Vettel, in his own words, emphatically stated that the reason for the break-up was not about money.
There is no denying that Vettel has made his fair share of mistakes over the last few seasons. Some of these mistakes were certainly embarrassing but perhaps not totally inexplicable.
More times than Ferrari would ever admit Vettel had to take charge not only of driving the car but also the team.
On several occasions he made strategy calls from the cockpit while the Ferrari pitwall stumbled their way through making decisions. From the outside it looked as if Vettel wasn’t only driving the car but that he also had to ensure that the team was performing to their best of their abilities.
Ferrari’s mistakes were plenty and some of them whoppers. Aside from the often diabolical strategy calls the decision-making on car development was ill-conceived and rushed. Vettel, carrying the responsibility on himself, had to compensate.
He tried to cover Ferrari’s shortcomings by pushing harder and harder on track and mistakes followed.
This amount of pressure is a lot for any driver to bear, probably too much. Sooner or later it was going to take its toll on Vettel and it did.
Enter the enormously talented Charles Leclerc. The young Monegasque driver joined the team still in the process of finding his feet in the sport. The expectation for Leclerc wasn’t as high as it was for Vettel. A few mistakes here and there were immediately forgiven and chalked up to inexperience and it was the right approach from Ferrari.
But it was evident early on that Ferrari was starry-eyed and their attention was beginning to shift away from Vettel to Leclerc.
It’s not first time that this has happened at Ferrari either. It happened with Raikkonen when Spanish bank Santander pushed for the signing of Fernando Alonso. Ferrari were head-over-heels for the Spaniard and ended up not only buying out Raikkonen’s contract but also paying him a substantial fee to not race for a rival team.
The great hope was that Alonso would swoop in and deliver titles. For a variety of reasons it didn’t happen and the last Ferrari world champion is still Kimi Raikkonen.
However, slowly and subtly it happened Vettel surely began to notice the shift towards Leclerc. It wasn’t helped by the fact that the media exaggerated the alleged tension between the drivers. Nor did it help that the pair crashed into each other in Brazil.
But what does this have to do with Vettel’s decision to leave Ferrari? There is little doubt that Ferrari wanted to renew Vettel’s contract. But it’s how they wanted to go about that renewal that likely gave Vettel pause. At 32 years old, Vettel is nearing the twilight of his career. It always seemed that his intention was to end his career at Ferrari. Therefore, it was likely that he was looking for a long-term deal, say three years, from the team. But they countered with a one-year deal.
This couldn’t have sat well with Vettel, because what it said to him was that Ferrari were hedging their bets.
The one-year deal said: We still want you to drive for us but we don’t have complete faith that you’ll perform. And if you don’t we’ll be in the position of being able to dump you at the end of the year. Vettel now knew that Ferrari no longer believed in him the way they should. There is no point in driving for a team that no longer has 100% faith in a driver. Instead of taking the scraps offered by Ferrari, Vettel chose to walk away. Vettel did not say whether he would be hanging up his helmet at the end of the year.
At Mercedes both Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas are out of contract at the end of 2020. Merc are likely to retain Hamilton unless he springs an unsuspected retirement on everyone. The rumours out of Germany are that Daimler is interested in the services of one Sebastian Vettel. However, Toto Wolff and Hamilton are apparently not keen on the idea.
Elsewhere, it is believed that Renault has initiated ‘conversation’ with Bottas. Purely, from a promotional standpoint Vettel and Hamilton at Merc is marketing gold.
It will undoubtedly inject considerable excitement into the sport with the possibility of intra-team Hamilton vs Vettel battle in the offing.
Whatever the future holds for Vettel, let’s not forget that he has won 53 Grands Prix and is responsible for writing an unprecedented chapter of the sport as the youngest one-time, two-time, three-time, and four-time world champion.
