The last message in public of Mattia Binotto, head of Ferrari, points out the seniority, cache and figure of Sebastian Vettel, who in theory should not be in this position
“When we go to Australia, there will be no number 1. They will be on par. We will be stronger next year. Before each race, we sit down with our drivers and discuss all possible scenarios. Believe me, at the beginning of the year we had some meetings that They were difficult to manage, but by the end of the season, I was more and more comfortable, which meant that we were getting used to it as a team. It certainly has not been an easy season and everyone can improve. But I think this is the way to optimize the results”. Which drivers among the most respected in the history of Formula 1 would shatter the intentions of Ferrari boss Mattia Binotto? Sebastian Vettel is not one of them.
Perhaps if ‘fangs’ like Ayrton Senna, Gilles Villeneuve, Niki Lauda or Fernando Alonso publicly comment that a 22-year-old will be able to compete with you on the team, knowing that the season began differently, they would have played their psychological cards to try not to have two roosters in a chicken coop. Binotto’s warning in the German publication of ‘Kronen Zeitung’ sounds like a shot with intent towards Vettel, made in the middle of his own country.
Vettel, 32, was surpassed in qualification last year by the Ferrari squad, who has just been renewed and armoured economically tripling the salary he had now (from now on he will enter about 9 million euros annually). Its movement is understood as a serious bet by Scuderia for the Monegasque and leaves the continuity of a Vettel in the air that concludes its contract at the end of 2020 (it charges about 40 million a year).
Vettel officially lowered from the pedestal
“His heart and his head have a difficult disease to cure called Leclerc,” the press said in Italy in October when they saw that the young man was definitely passing over the supposed star of the team. Before saying goodbye to the year, Binotto has ‘formalized’ that fall of the throne and, perhaps, the following is his departure because if it is consumed in 2020 that he is a second pilot, no team can afford to have such an expensive squire. From here: or salary reduction or departure from Maranello.
While it is true that last year it was learned that certain personal problems were interfering with the performance of the world champion, by 2019 these reasons should have disappeared, at least part of the year. “Next year I must improve,” Vettel acknowledged after finishing the course. Will it be your last chance?
When Vettel did not stop winning with Red Bull, Fernando Alonso said that “we will see the real Vettel when he does not have a winning car.” Those years of victories, the car he had in his hands came as a ring to the finger to his style of piloting and was relentless, despairing the temper of a tanned driver like Mark Webber (his partner) and overcoming the pressure of the Ferrari of Fernando Alonso when he had him breathing in his neck.
2018 and its failures
However, the change to a hybrid was not very good and if in Red Bull it was surpassed by Daniel Ricciardo in 2014, in Ferrari life has not been much better and is going without penalty or glory for the Italian team. In 2015 and 2016 he was not able to fight for the championship with a car lower than Mercedes, in 2017 he approached something but not enough to intimidate Lewis Hamilton and in 2018 a too large list of failures deprived him of being able to fight the title. In 2019 it has already been known how it has ended: dethroned in the red house.
In Italy, they asked themselves several times if in 2017 and, especially, in 2018 what would have happened if Fernando Alonso had the Ferrari in hand since the Spaniard, with a lower machine, had been able to play two World Cups until the last laps of the championship. The shadow of the Spanish has been there and has not been removed …
Historically, Vettel is only surpassed by titles Michael Schumacher, Lewis Hamilton, Juan Manuel Fangio and Alain Prost (same as the German). Is Vettel up to them? Maybe in 2020, it is not a simple season for the German, but it is a good opportunity to answer who does not believe that his talent is not in the ‘top 5’ in the history of Formula 1 … or, at least, improve the rankings of experts, drivers and F1 fans on the best driver of the year that left him far from the top positions.