Saying Auf Wiedersehen to an F1 legend and a friend: Sebastian Vettel
Sunday’s Formula 1 season finale at Abu Dhabi will be the final bow for Sebastian Vettel (barring a future guest appearance) and brings to an end the final chapter on one of the more colorful careers the sport has been privileged to witness.
Vettel’s journey started in 2007 at Indianapolis, a fact that in itself seems a remnant of another age, but it was actually just 15 years ago when he stepped in for the Sauber team (then in its glory days as the BMW partner), taking over for a single race for a recovering Robert Kubica, who was suffering the effects from a concussion.
As it happened, the starting row that day consisted of Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso, two gentlemen Vettel would get to know very well over the following decade and a half. A sixth-place qualification and eight-place finish meant that the 20-year-old was at the time the youngest driver to score an F1 point and showed enough to the Red Bull organization to hire him to replace Scott Speed as a full-time driver for their junior Toro Rosso team just two months later.
Speed had been at odds with team leader Franz Tost (a feud that was rumored to have gotten physical), and going into that race the team was without a point, with Speed having only managed to complete the full distance in three of eight races. Vettel, who was essentially making the jump from F3, didn’t have immediate success but just seven races into his F1 tenure, scored a shocking fourth-place finish in China during a wet race with some help from a lucky strategy call.
His first full season in 2008 started as another exercise in futility as Toro Rosso, as a lack of spare parts for their new car meant more running in the poorly performing 2007 car, but when the new STR3 finally got on track for the sixth race of the season, Vettel was ready to start showing off why the team had hired him.
At Monza in September, another rainy track would give the young driver an opportunity, as the sport would start to realize how much wet asphalt was to the German driver’s liking.
That weekend Vettel would be the youngest driver to take a Formula 1 pole position, and on that Sunday he would become the youngest to ever win a Formula 1 Grand Prix. It was the only win that year for the organization, and the junior team would finish sixth in the constructor’s competition, one place better than their big brothers racing under the Red Bull banner.
With David Coulthard retiring from Red Bull in 2009, the team moved their rising young star to the main team. At the start of the season, there was talk that Toro Rosso, which at the time had virtually the same chassis as Red Bull, was actually going to be the stronger team that year, but after poor results in the first two races, the rain would bless Vettel again in China, bringing his first win with the team.
From that point it wouldn’t be only on wet tracks that Vettel would be fighting for the front, collecting three more wins on the way to second place in the driver’s championship, only unable to get past Jensen Button in the standings, who had won six of the first seven events of the season.
Winning two of the final three events of 2009 was the warning to the rest of the field, as Vettel would win the next four championships for Red Bull, first eeking out the top spot over Fernando Alonso in 2010, and then completely dominating the sport in 2011, winning 11 races, and only finishing worse than second three times (once having to retire after a tire puncture caused him to spin off the track).
As often happens with young athletes achieving huge success, Vettel was becoming the preferred target of fans of the rest of the field, showering him with boos when he’d climb down from the top steps of podiums for interviews. When Martin Brundle chastised fans in Singapore, Vettel joked about his detractors -- “they have a tour, they go around in a bus” -- but he kept smiling.
Ferrari fans who had hoped for a championship after signing Fernando Alonso in 2010, seemed to have a particular disdain for Vettel, as their man would end up finishing second in three of those four years.
Vettel was perhaps perplexed by the fans, even saying he was “hurt” by the reaction at times. He wasn’t particularly cocky, considered a dirty driver or even reticent to open up in interviews; he was just a driver who kept winning for a team that didn’t have the long history of Ferrari, Williams or McLaren.
All that was supposed to change in 2015. Following up his four championships with a lackluster fifth place in 2014 after a change in the engine formulas, Red Bull seemed ready to start preparing for their future with Daniel Ricciardo (who had beaten Vettel in the standings) and preparing for a young phenom name Max Verstappen who was dominating the junior ranks.
Vettel jumped at the chance to move to Ferrari, where he could finally embrace the cheers of the sport’s most rabid fan base.
It started off well with a third place in Australia and then a big win in Malaysia, but unfortunately, the era of Mercedes had begun, and though he would win two more races that year, he would watch Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg pull farther and farther away from the rest of the pack. Indeed, the three Vettel wins would be the only non-Mercedes top finishes that year.
Vettel would have the cheers of Ferrari’s Tifosi, but everyone besides Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg would be an afterthought in 2016, as the two won all but one race, with Vettel managing seven podium appearances, as Ferrari fell to the back of “the big three” teams.
2017 should have been the year it all came together. Winning three of the first six races including Monaco, he stood atop the standings and had his focus firmly on the championship. Picking up some damage from contact at the start of the Canadian race left him with a fourth, but the next week in Azerbaijan, a bizarre incident occurred in which Vettel drove into the back of Hamilton during a safety car period, then drove alongside and purposefully sideswiped the Mercedes, believing Hamilton had purposefully brake-tested him (later proven not to have been the case).
This not only led to an on-track penalty, but meetings with Ferrari and the FIA to discuss the dangerous incident, eventually being resolved by Vettel agreeing to “community service” time spent educating young drivers and also being dropped from the FIA road safety campaign.
This was perhaps a dividing line in the career of the German driver. While he would finish second in the standings that year and repeat the feat in 2018, winning several races, he would not be a threat to Hamilton’s dominance at the front. 2019 would be a single-win season, with a drop to fifth in the final standings, one place behind new Ferrari star Charles Leclerc.
Even worse would be an FIA investigation into the Ferrari engine, which would leave the team crippled for 2020. Vettel would manage a single podium finish (in a rain-soaked race, natch), and spend the season trying to fight his way into top 10 finishes.
Once again, a drop in the standings would signal his departure from a team, as Ferrari planned to move forward with Leclerc as their top dog, and Vettel decided to move to the midfield Aston Martin team, effectively ending his chances of becoming a five-time champion.
Even though Vettel would never get the adoration from the Ferrari fans that bringing a championship to the team would bring, fan attitudes overall had shifted. No longer taking championships away from their favorites, fans began to notice the humor, smile, and attitude that they liked in a driver.
Unlike teammate Kimi Räikkönen, whose unwillingness to ever say more than a word or two made him a sort of folk hero, Vettel was happy to open up about his feelings in front of the microphone, which often included appreciation for those around him, including his team, other drivers, and the fans themselves.
Despite being one of the rare celebrities to totally abstain from social media, he would shine when featured on F1 official channels, speaking easily in English, French, Finnish and Italian as well as his native German (and allegedly knowing how to swear in 30 languages).
As a younger man, dropping out of the elite circles of the sport would have been devastating. But in his 30s and with three young children, while not having lost the drive to compete, Vettel was beginning to find other things mattered as well, particularly the world his family was living in.
Being one of the highest profile competitors in a sport watched by millions, Vettel began to use the platform he had available for activism, both human rights and climate – which he admitted could be at odds with his chosen profession. This would come to a head at the 2022 Canadian Grand Prix, when he wore a shirt saying “stop Canada’s climate crime”, causing some residents of the country to point out his team was sponsored by the Saudi Arabian oil industry.
Nevertheless, Vettel felt a responsibility to do what he could for the earth, and it may have played a role in his decision to retire.
So 2023 will see Sebastian Vettel stepping away from the Formula 1 traveling circus, though he seems to have no plans to hang up his driving gloves anytime soon. He’s already committed to the Race of Champions in Sweden this January, an event in which he’s been one of the most successful participants.
After that? There certainly will be many more races to attempt, more causes to champion, and of course a chance to show his family some of the places he previously worked. One other thing of note: Sunday will mark Vettel's 300th F1 start in a career that not only saw the aforementioned four championships, but also 53 wins, 122 podiums and 57 poles.
What’s remarkable is that when the driver who was once booed for winning too many times returns to Formula 1 – whether in some professional capacity or merely as a visitor -- it won’t be primarily as “four-time champion”, but as one of the truly loved and admired figures of the sport.