'One of F1's greatest': Why F1 won't let Sebastian Vettel retire quietly

If Sebastian Vettel harboured any hopes of slipping quietly into retirement over the course of the Abu Dhabi GP weekend, he has been proven wrong.

With no title battle on which to focus, Vettel’s last hurrah after a stellar 15-year career in the sport has become the big story of the weekend. The German has friends and family attendance, and a set of childhood karting overalls are hanging in the Aston Martin garage as a reminder of his humble beginnings.

On Thursday he was honoured at a dinner attended by all 19 of his fellow drivers, and then on Saturday evening he hosted a run around the Yas Marina track, open to everyone from the paddock, as a way of marking his retirement. Inevitably there’s more to come on the grid, and after the race.

The great thing is that he hasn’t faded into obscurity at the back of the grid. He put in storming drives to sixth in Japan and eighth in Austin, on both occasions fighting to the last corner of the last lap.

He was also on brilliant form in qualifying in Abu Dhabi, getting through Q1 in sixth and ultimately taking ninth on the grid for his final start. His team mate Lance Stroll starts 14th.

“Before qualifying I had some thoughts about the people that can’t be here,” he said when I asked him about the emotions that must be buzzing around his head. “Because they’re not with us anymore, or they didn’t make it. Obviously, there’s a lot of people that are here, which is very special.

“It’s been a long time. And it’s a funny feeling, I have to admit. But as soon as you’re in the car and you drive out, you’re quite busy. I enjoy it most when I’m present, and it was, I think, a good session.”

Vettel still has a race to do, and given that Aston Martin is fighting Alfa Romeo for sixth in the championship – the margin is just five points – the team is keen for him to perform at his best on Sunday evening.

“As you can expect, there’s a lot of people around trying to get their last moment with Sebastian,” said Aston boss Mike Krack.

“It’s actually quite difficult to keep the distraction away, trying to focus on our last race because there is still something we could do in the championship.

“It’s a fine balance, like trying to keep everybody on it and allow them all to celebrate their moment with Sebastian. I try to keep it away until the chequered flag, and then we can party.”

Krack has only been at Aston for a season, but he knew Vettel back in their BMW Sauber days, and he’s enjoyed rekindling that relationship.

“There were many highlights,” he said of this year. “But I think the highlights are maybe not what you expect – great moments.

“It’s the moments you are going through difficult times, and getting yourself out. Like when you have good conversations about what to do with the car, what he needs. These are more highlights for us than seeing it then happen on the track when he gets better results out of it.”

“Telling Vettel he wouldn’t be retained was maybe the most difficult task of my career”

It says a lot that Vettel is respected up and down the paddock, not least by the teams that he drove for in the past. Ferrari even hosted its own farewell event – as it did for Kimi Räikkönen last year, although as an Alfa Romeo man he was still part of the family.

“First, Sebastian is a great, great driver and I don’t think it’s myself telling it, it’s really what he has achieved,” team boss Mattia Binotto said on Saturday. “Fantastic, outstanding, amazing. And somehow, as Ferrari, we have been lucky to have him as part of the team, and it has been six important years.

“He brought a lot as a driver, but more than that, I think he brought a lot as a person, and each single Ferrari fan still loves Sebastian. I think that’s a matter of fact. And as each single fan loves Ferrari still, I think we in Ferrari, all the people in Ferrari, are still loving him and that’s the way we are feeling. They have been incredible years, I think.”

Binotto admitted that telling Vettel he wouldn’t be retained for 2021 was not an easy task.

“Difficult for myself, coming to the end, somehow to announce to him that we will not renew,” said the Italian. “And that maybe has been the most difficult task I’ve done myself through my career. Because when you love such a person and you really enjoy working with him, it’s always difficult to come to the end and take a decision somehow to announce it.

“So I think it has been an important moment as well for my career itself. Through difficulties you become stronger. But it’s the one that we will remember as the most difficult one.”

Vettel regards his Ferrari years as a failure, because he didn’t win a title with the Maranello team. So does Binotto agree?

“I think he is somehow right because when he joined Ferrari, he was ambitious, his objective was to win the title with Ferrari and I think together with himself, it was our dream and our objective as well. So it has been a failure for him but it has been a failure all together as a team.

“He has been very close, or at least the closest he has been was ‘17 and ’18, so we had a few opportunities. But we didn’t get it, and I think somehow when your final objective is to do that, and if you do not achieve it, if it’s a failure.”

He didn’t fail at Red Bull, where he won four titles on the bounce in 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013. That run alone should earn him a spot among the all-time greats. Yes, for much of that time RBR clearly had the best car, but in two of those years it went down to the wire, and Vettel really had to work for it.

It says a lot that despite leaving the team in the lurch when he signed for Ferrari, Vettel is as loved in Milton Keynes as he is in Maranello.

“He’s just a consummate professional,” says RBR boss Christian Horner. “He came to us as a young kid with a brace and a funny haircut. And he just grew in that time as a Red Bull junior.

‘Is that Vettel with the donkey from Shrek?’ — somebody nearly drove off the road!

“He’s just got such an endearing personality, he’d turn up with chocolates for the receptionist and the secretaries, and he just endeared himself to everybody. He had the ability to mimic and impersonate so many different accents from cockney slang to Nigel Mansell. His Jean Todt was legendary.

“So, just a brilliant, brilliant character. And an even more brilliant driver. I mean, what we achieved together, the four consecutive world championships, the way that he went into the final race here, in 2010, and in Brazil, 2012, phenomenal, phenomenal memories.

“He just got better and better. I mean, ’10, it went down to the wire; ’11, he was truly dominant; ’12 he never gave up and came right; he won four critical races in ’12. He’d won one race before we left Europe that year and then delivered incredibly.

“Then ‘13, he was just on a different level. Those nine consecutive victories were insane, and the level of intensity that he had to deliver that was outstanding.”

Horner acknowledged that the last title was a while ago: “Obviously, the last couple of years have been more challenging for him, but it shouldn’t diminish from anything that he’s done and achieved as one of the greatest drivers ever in F1. And just beyond that, just a great guy. So many memories away from the track with him.

“He used to come and stay at the house. I live in the countryside on a bit of a farm, and they were lambing, the lambs were being born in a shed and he wanted to get involved and see, and I just remember the local farmer turning up with Sebastian helping to pull a couple of lambs out.

“And [the farmer] didn’t have a clue who he was, who this guy is, a four time world champion, in a sheep shed. Or, I remember, he took a couple of donkeys – we’ve got a couple of miniature donkeys – for a walk, and he’s walking through the village and somebody nearly drove off the road thinking, ‘Is that Sebastian Vettel with the donkey from Shrek?’ So, just a lovely, lovely guy, and I think we’ll all miss him in F1.”

So what’s next for Sebastian Vettel? It’s obvious that he has many interests outside the sport, but he hasn’t ruled out driving something in the future.

“I think naturally you do look at other stuff,” he said on Thursday. “I don’t know yet, is the answer. I quite look forward to the idea of nothing, at first, and then see what it does to me.

“I mean, there are lots of other things in my head as well. Other interests and ideas outside racing. But yeah, obviously I’ve done this for so long, and it’s central to my life.

“So it will be difficult to say that I’m not going to miss it, but how much and whether then I start to look at something else, we’ll see. I always liked, for some reason, rallying, but I can see it’s a major challenge, because it’s so different to what we do in, let’s say, classic circuit racing. So yeah, I don’t know. We’ll see…”