F1 News: Sebastian Vettel On Current Formula One - "A Lot Of Room For Improvement"
Former F1 champion Sebastian Vettel has spoken out on the current state of Formula One and Max Verstappen's dominance after he retired at the end of the 2022 season.
During an interview with the press, including F1 Briefings, at the Goodwood Festival of Speed, Vettel explained that whilst there has been a lot of improvement in the sport more still needs to be done. He explained:
"Well, still a lot of room for improvement. Simple as that. I think people are trying, but the answer is we can't try hard enough and they do need to try harder.
"Obviously I'm out, so I'm following and I've watched the races. I wasn't sure whether I wanted to watch or not, was a bit nervous and it was a bit strange.
"But then I was happy, especially for Aston [Martin] that they're doing well. Since then I've been watching the races, not all the races, but then watched the highlights and been catching up and obviously it's quite clear who's gonna win this year.
"That's not gonna be a surprise, but it's nice to see that behind there a lot of fights going on and it's quite tight now. McLaren had stronger form. I think that's ultimately what is always more fun to watch, when it's closer."
The four-time F1 champion went on to discuss Max Verstappen's current dominance in the sport. The Dutch driver has won eight out of the ten races so far this season and is leading the drivers' standings with an incredible 255 points. Comparing it to his dominance when he won four consecutive championships between 2010 to 2013, Vettel explained:
"Well, I think every year is different and every phase of when somebody was able to dominate or win a lot is probably different. I don't think there's much point comparing because it was a different time when I was racing. But what you do need to learn to enjoy is just the perfection.
"It's just the level of consistency and the skill of getting it right from the whole team. Red Bull has won every race so far, which we definitely did not achieve when I was dominating. But, hats off to that.
"Obviously it's an incredible achievement when it comes to engineering the car and coming out with such a strong car that he's able to beat everybody else so far on every track.
"But also from a driver's point of view, you have to give it to him. He's doing an incredible job. He's an incredible talent, and he's not doing any mistakes. I mean, Sergio [Perez] is not a bad driver, but you see how quickly things can go wrong and then some Sundays it might be easy to get through and other Sundays it might be harder.
"Obviously if you're always at the front, because you are doing a very good job, then people might turn around and say it's boring and it's easy, but actually it takes a lot more than that."
Vettel went on to argue against those who feel it is boring by saying that Lewis Hamilton would agree that it wasn't easy when he was dominating in the sport. He continued:
"I'm sure Lewis [Hamilton] would agree as well in all the years that he won that it wasn't a walk in the park and also you go back to me, to Michael [Schumacher], to Mika [Hakkinen], to all the people that maybe had their era, it wasn't a walk in the park and it was probably when you were your best and enjoying it as well.
"Nothing is impossible and with the car that they have, there is a chance [that Red Bull will win all of the races this year].
"But it's also a lot more so it's reliability, all the lap one incidences, the freak stuff that can happen in the race. But again, if you're on top of your game, you've learnt to control these things more and more. You have the sort of 360 overview of what's going on in the race.