Opinion: Why Sebastian Vettel’s F1 Dream is Unravelling

Sebastian Vettel’s error at last weekend’s British GP is just the latest of a long-line of incidents surrounding the German since the 2018 German GP at Hockenheim. Now a year on from that crash, what has gone so wrong for the four-times Formula 1 World Champion that has meant he is so far from his serial championship-winning best? 

When Vettel arrived at Ferrari back in 2015, the German had just suffered his worst Formula 1 season to date in 2014, which saw him end the year 71 points behind his younger Australian team-mate Daniel Ricciardo, and for the first time ended a F1 campaign without a win. So a change of scenery is just what the doctor ordered and he enjoyed a much better 2015, securing three wins in Malaysia, Hungary and Singapore on his way to third in the championship standings. 

At that point, there was a feeling that Vettel had reinvigorated Ferrari after the Italian team lost their way with the increasing frustration from their previous A-lister Fernando Alonso in 2013 and 2014. While 2016 was a season to forget for the Scuderia, the 2017 rules allowed Ferrari to take a major leap forward and were closer to Mercedes by the end of the year with Vettel and Ferrari finishing second in the drivers and teams championships respectively. 

While the 2018 Ferrari F1 car was no match for Mercedes in Australia, the Scuderia soon improved the pace of the SF71H to be on-par with Mercedes once the Formula 1 circus headed to European leg of the season. That pace over Mercedes was epitomized by Vettel’s surprise win at Silverstone over Lewis Hamilton which meant that heading to his home race, the German now led the world championship. 

But that weekend at Hockenheim when the German racer slid off the road while comfortably leading his home race was the first of what has been a litany of mistakes from Vettel. So the crucial question remains whether that incident was the catalyst to his continual downfall, or whether an off-track moment at that time proved to be more significant? 

While it might seem logical that his crash in Germany was the catalyst to his continual downward trend in form, on the week leading up to 2018 Hungarian GP, Ferrari president Sergio Marchionne died at Zurich hospital after complications following surgery to his shoulder. That truly affected Vettel like nobody in the paddock at the time understood. The German was working to help bring the team and was taking on way too much responsibility for Ferrari politics. Louis Camileri and Nicola Boari spearheaded the Ferrari leadership team as the chief executive officer and chief brand officer respectively. But despite their best efforts, they were unable to get the best out of their lead driver in the midst of a fiercely-competitive championship campaign. 

The impact of Marchionne’s death on Vettel wasn’t immediately apparent with a second in Hungary and his most recent victory to date in Belgium. But the Vettel that turned up at the Italian GP at Monza was not the same driver that had gone toe-to-toe with Lewis Hamilton for the first half of the season. But after being out-qualified by his team-mate at the time Kimi Raikkonen in qualifying, he spun after battling with Hamilton in the race. This was followed by a couple of almost-identical incidents in the remaining races: a spin after fighting Max Verstappen at Suzuka and with Daniel Ricciardo at the Circuit of the Americas which brought his championship charge to a premature end. 

For 2019, key decisions were taken regarding the internal politics at Scuderia Ferrari. Firstly, Mattia Binotto was made team principal, with the stern figure of Maurizo Arrivabene being told arrivederci by the Italian team. But significantly for Vettel, the experienced, relaxed but untroubling for Vettel, Kimi Raikkonen, was ditched in favour for the young, exuberant Charles Leclerc in a bid to push the German. 

And while Vettel started the year clearly out-performing his inexperienced Monegasque team-mate, in the last three races, Vettel has been out-qualified by Leclerc by over 0.6 of a second and has been categorically beaten in the past three events. For the season as a whole, if you discount the unrepresentative sessions in Azerbaijan and Monaco, Vettel has been on average 0.235 seconds a lap slower than Leclerc in qualifying despite leading in their qualifying battle 6-4 after ten events this year. 

In some ways, this is more worrying for Vettel than his array of clashes and incidents since last year’s German GP, as he now not only lacks an eye for wheel-to-wheel combat compared to his younger team-mate, but also in terms of out-and-out racing speed which he was so famous for during his Red Bull Racing days.

That could partly be explained by the fact that Ferrari’s revolutionary design unconsciously favours Leclerc’s natural driving style over Vettel as the SF90 is naturally more prone to understeer. As the German needs to have a car that has a stable front-end in order for him to be able to get the most out of the car is making things increasingly difficult for Vettel. 

So in his fifth season with Scuderia Ferrari and no closer to a Formula 1 World Championship in a scarlet car, could Vettel be on his way out? In an interview with Channel 4’s Lee McKenzie at this year’s Monaco GP, quitting Formula 1 was on his mind as he said: 

“It would be quite sad if all that peak, who knows, is behind me. Then what do you look forward to?”

“Even if I stop now, I hope I would be looking forward to other things.”

Could this signal that Vettel is on his way out of not only Ferrari but Formula 1? After five frustrating years in red, the German is the middle of his most frustrating year to date as even his best weekend of the year at Canada ended with a sour taste after he was given a five second time penalty which stripped him of race victory. Now that the other side of the garage has all the momentum and is capturing the imagination of the paddock after battling with Max Verstappen at Silverstone, how much longer has Vettel got? 

It is clear that after unconditionally supporting Vettel in all circumstances, the momentum and initiative within Ferrari is very much with Leclerc. After securing four podium finishes in a row since Canada, the Monegasque will get another boost as former chief designer at Alfa Romeo, Simone Resta will join Ferrari’s technical team which will only fuel Leclerc’s fire. 

As the Formula 1 summer break is fast-approaching, Vettel is between a rock and a hard place as he knows that he needs to change his approach to racing in F1. First of all, he needs to acknowledge how much Marchionne’s death has truly affected him and he needs to get the neccessary help for that and any other external pressures that are distracting from his racing. Then he needs to decide whether staying at Ferrari will be best for his long-term racing future and his legacy because Vettel is one of the best drivers of this current generation, and it would be a terrible crime to see him continue on this path towards self-destruction.