0:08 - “Vettel’s Judgement Has Gone” 1:57 - Fears Smaller Teams Could Quit - “The Top Teams Need Us”
4:19 - Fast Feed
“Vettel’s Judgement Has Gone”
In the last two years, Sebastian Vettel has gone from being the biggest threat to Mercedes’ and Lewis Hamilton’s dominance to being overshadowed by his teammate. Martin Brundle delved into the possible reasons behind this drop in performance.
“I never understood Seb’s awful season, when Ricciardo arrived. He kept on about how he hated the hybrid cars – but when he got to Ferrari he was immediately on the pace."
Brundle further gave his thoughts on why Vettel possibly left for Ferrari
"I’ve always wondered if he went slowly in 2014 because he needed to trigger his Red Bull exit clause. Whatever, he had to leave, because another year like that with Danny Ricc, and his value would have dropped to almost nothing…”
“I think that Vettel’s judgement in wheel-to-wheel combat has gone, and that’s critical. He’s always operated on a pretty highly strung level, but these days his default mood is to get angry, forever moaning about backmarkers, and so on, and that’s sad. I remember when he’d turn up with a rucksack, smiling, ready to go – I adored him in those days"
David Coulthard summed it up by revealing that the qualities that made Vettel great in the past are the same ones that are holding him back now
“He definitely has a problem with that. Pushed to his raw racing instincts, Vettel is emotional and reactive. You could say that those characteristics are what has made him great, but equally they’ve been a weakness throughout his career. He’ll never, ever, admit that he was at fault"
Fears Smaller Teams Could Quit - “The Top Teams Need Us”
F1 set a budget cap at $175 million but some of the smaller teams have been calling for a tighter budget cap that is as low as $100 million. This has been opposed by some teams like Ferrari which is being seen as a short-sighted and selfish move by many F1 experts.
Jean Todt explained why a much lower budget cap is needed as it is no longer just about equal opportunity but also about surviving in a world that will be financially decimated by the pandemic
"I'm sure many small and medium sized teams, suppliers and manufacturers will go over their programs again and then perhaps come to the conclusion that they should stop”
"The small and large teams look at this in different ways of course. So we have to convince the large teams that the original plan is not drastic enough, and we are working on that now, but the proposal that is there is still not good enough"
Guenther Steiner offered a first hand account of what the smaller teams are expecting from the future.
"The budget cap that Formula 1 wants to set is, as it is now planned, too high for the medium and long term. Everything has changed. The economy won't recover as fast as we all want it to. That's why you have to adapt and not dream of what it was like before the crisis"
He also commented on the state of F1 now where the smaller teams never get to compete for wins.
"Just join in, be three or four seconds slower and spend a lot of money makes no sense. The top teams need us to fill the field and that's why we need to agree on something where it's possible for all of us to race"
Fast Feed
- F1 legend Sir Stirling Moss has passed away at the age of 90. He was considered to be the greatest ever F1 driver never to have won a championship
- Austria’s Minister of Sports, Werner Kogler, has revealed that "a Grand Prix is possible” in the country provided “the organizers” “comply with all health and safety regulations”
- Lewis Hamilton has appealed to his Chinese fans by saying that he would be very ”grateful if” they could “vote and push for” a law to declare dogs and cats as pets so that they cannot be consumed as food
- He has also urged his fans through social media to stay positive in the midst of the current crisis
- Rubens Barrichello thinks that “Hamilton's qualities make him better than Alonso” “especially because he fought with Alonso at an early stage of his career” and came out on top
- Nico Rosberg has suggested that the "feeling of the start” of an F1 race for a driver is like “the birth of your first child” as it is "intense as hell"
- He also revealed the reason for retiring immediately after winning the 2016 championship saying as he had the desire “to start a day that is completely 'freestyle', where it's not just about winning the next race"
- Raymond Vermeulen believes that "Max Verstappen is the reason that there will be another Dutch Grand Prix" and is astonished that “all the developments at the Zandvoort circuit are fed by one sportsman in the Netherlands”
- David Richards is glad that he never started a team in F1 despite almost doing so many times as he would “probably” be “bankrupt by now"
- Lando Norris expects “the ranking to remain the same” headed by the “three top teams” followed by “Racing Point and then the rest"
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