He is considered, along with Hamilton, one of Fernando Alonso’s great rivals in the last decade
Sebastian Vettel will say goodbye to Formula 1 on November 20, 2022. The German driver announced this morning that he will retire from the Grand Circus at the end of the season, and will do so on the circuit where he was crowned world champion for the first time in 2010 time. From that day on, the word success was linked to his surname. Four consecutive world championships (2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013) with what to date had been the best car in history, Adrian Newey’s Red Bull.
The German retires with 53 victories, the third driver who has climbed to the top of the podium the most times throughout the almost 100-year history of F1. He is second only to seven-time champions Lewis Hamilton (103 wins) and Michael Schumacher (91).
Vettel’s career will be remembered for his time at Red Bull and Ferrari where he waged an intense rivalry with Fernando Alonso, and to a lesser extent, Lewis Hamilton. It was the German who replaced the Spanish in the Italian team. There, with a more competitive car than Alonso had enjoyed, he was able to fight for the world championship against the almighty Mercedes for four seasons. But just as it happened to the Asturian years ago, the most precious title in F1 eluded Ferrari. Vettel could not be champion with the Italians.
Mission that Alonso could not fulfill either when from 2010 to 2013 he crashed against Vettel’s unstoppable Red Bull. It was in those years when a historic rivalry was forged that reached similar heights to that of Hamilton and Alonso in the McLaren box in 2007. The Spaniard could have been champion in 2010 and 2012 but luck eluded him and he opted for the German. The same fate that would penalize Vettel years later in his fight against Hamilton.
Frustration and a strained relationship with Ferrari led the German to force an exit. His destination, the former Force India renamed Aston Martin. The result, a failure. Vettel has been living at the bottom of the grid since 2019, just as his rival Alonso did in 2015 with McLaren Honda, and that for a four-time world champion is difficult to accept. Vettel goes home and does so as one of the greatest in history.